The Soil CRC will be offering over 40 PhD scholarship opportunities over the next eight years.

PhD scholars through the Soil CRC will have opportunities to develop their industry knowledge and relevance, through additional training and networking opportunities associated with the Soil CRC, and will be part of nationwide cohort of Soil CRC postgraduate students. They will have the opportunity to work with researchers, farmers groups and industry from across Australia through the Soil CRC PhD program.

The CRC Program aims to develop and commercialise leading-edge research and produce graduates with hands-on industry experience to help create a highly-skilled workforce.

Our call for PhD Scholarships has closed. Future PhD Scholarships may be funded through Major Investment Rounds as part of projects. Please contact the relevant Program Leader for more information.

The following projects have been funded by the Soil CRC are advertising for students.

Beyond adoption: finding more appropriate ways to evaluate the success of soil outreach

This research will provide an expanded range of frameworks for considering and evaluating the success of innovative activities in Australian agriculture. The successful candidate will critique the assumption that agricultural innovation succeeds mostly through linear transfer of knowledge from researcher to practitioner. Suitably qualified candidates with skills in both social research and agriculture are welcome to apply, especially those with interest in transdisciplinary research and systems thinking.  Applications close Friday 17 July 2020.

Redox in the rhizosphere: a new paradigm for plant phosphorus acquisition

The low efficiency of phosphorus use in agriculture and the finite nature of rock phosphate fertiliser resources has driven major research efforts toward understanding how plants can access recalcitrant inorganic phosphorus pools in soils. In soils dominated by iron minerals, low phosphorus availability strongly limits plant growth and crop yields. While there has been significant research into ways to increase phosphorus availability in soil, much of this work has been based on an incomplete understanding of the nature of mineral bound phosphorus. This PhD project will examine whether microbially-mediated redox reactions in rhizosphere can play a major role in acquisition of phosphorus by plants in aerobic, acid soils. The successful applicants will need to apply and meet the entry requirements to enrol in a PhD at Southern Cross University.

Soil organic matter storage in deep soils

Soil measurements rarely extend below the top 20 cm of agricultural soils. However, what we do in these top 20 cm may dramatically alter the structure and function of deeper soil, where we now know large quantities of carbon and nitrogen are stored. The successful candidate will be based in the Centre for Coastal Biogeochemistry at Southern Cross University in northeastern New South Wales.

Developing a Hyperspectral Imagery based Decision Support System for Soil Assessment using Vegetation Pattern

Assessing soil properties (e.g. moisture, chemical/organic constituents) is necessary for better yield management. The assessment of those properties is difficult using traditional technology due to vegetation in the soil. This project aims to develop a decision support system using the Hyperspectral imaging of the vegetation canopy and soil for quantifying those variant properties.