Current perceptions and practices on soil microbiome and soil inoculants in the UK grower community
This study focuses on the importance of experiential knowledge to people’s perceptions of soil inoculants and understanding of the soil microbiome. It also highlights that there is a wide gap between research on microbial inoculants and its use in the grower community. This leads to many challenges and barriers which may prevent the successful uptake and application of current as well as future soil microbiome based technologies. The study suggests that future research needs to involve the growing community more strongly in product development and testing for technology success and uptake.
The analysed data is from semi-structured interviews with farmers and urban growers on soil inoculants and soil microbiome and associated practices. Thematic analysis was done in NVivo to identify themes from the data. The ethics application was approved by the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences.
The first section is "Soil microbiome", it explores participants’ descriptions of the soil and the soil microbiome and; their recognition and appreciation of its importance. The second section is "Practices around the soil microbiome". In this section, the practices used by participants, which are sub-grouped into the different themes, are discussed. The third section is "Assessing the soil microbiome and changes due to practices". This section discusses the different methods that participants use to assess changes in their soils. The last section is called "Soil inoculants" and it focusses on discussing different identified themes, which are important to the participants.
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