Israel Biochar Researchers Network

The Institute of Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences comprises two departments - Environmental Physics and Irrigation; and Soil Chemistry and Plant Nutrition - in which 22 scientists, 24 engineers and technicians, and more than 20 visiting scientists and students are engaged. The annual research income of the Institute is about $1.7 million, all from local and international competitive grants.

Current research conducted at the Institute focuses mainly on:

• Economically and environmentally sound management of irrigation, fertilization, crop microclimate control and tillage in open fields, screenhouses and greenhouses, with significant efforts devoted to closed-loop fertigation.
• Safe use of marginal waters, organic wastes and industrial by-products, with special emphasis on nutrients availability, soil structure stability, microbial processes, transport and fate of microelements and of organic and inorganic contaminants.
• Development of advanced soil management practices. The use of soil amendments for mitigating evaporation, salinization, sodification, runoff, erosion and soil structure deterioration, in both rain-fed and irrigated farming.
• Development of mechanistic-stochastic models for quantifying water flow and solute transport on the field scale, for assessment of risks of soil and groundwater contamination by organic and inorganic pollutants, and for quantifying C and N turnover in soils.