Autumn Science Lecture 2022: 'Climate breakdown and agriculture; can we square the circle?'

The second instalment of our Autumn Science Lectures took place on Thursday 20 October, with the University of Oxford's Philip Poole delivering the talk: 'Climate breakdown and agriculture; can we square the circle?'
This lecture addresses the importance of plant microbe interactions in agriculture and reducing climate impact.
Agriculture depends on a complex balance of global nutrient cycles with carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous being the main drivers of agricultural productivity. Agriculture directly contributes 10% of global CO2 production, 14% to total land use and over 21% the global food system. Reactive nitrogen is now double preindustrial levels, largely driven by agricultural fertilizer use. How then can we feed an increasing population without a climate catastrophe?
Philip Poole did his PhD in Australia before coming to the UK, he was Professor of Microbial Physiology at the University of Reading before moving to the John Innes Centre in Norwich. In 2013, he took up a personal chair as Professor of Plant Microbiology at the University of Oxford, where he is head of Molecular Plant Sciences in the new Department of Biology.
He studies the physiology of bacterial growth and survival in the rhizosphere, colonisation of roots and how bacteria establish symbiotic interactions with plants. A particular focus of his research is the physiology and biochemistry of nitrogen fixation in legume nodules and how this underpins global nitrogen cycling.