Despite the Christmas season being busy, over 90 registered for SHui’s 5th webinar, entitled Quantifying the Soil-Plant-Atmosphere Continuum. Continuing the trend established by SHui’s September General Assembly, this hybrid event allowed participants to either attend in-person in Lancaster or online on Teams. Although most speakers attended in person, Dr Katharina Huntenburg of the National Institute of Agricultural Botany and Dr Andrew Hirons of University College Myerscough presented remotely. Developing new measurement techniques and applying existing instrumentation in novel ways was a recurrent theme of the symposium, with speakers and attendees drawn from both the academic and commercial worlds.

1 – John Quinton (Lancaster): Detecting soil degradation and restoration
2 – Ryan Edge (Lancaster): Root-soil interactions enhancing crop-soil functions
3 – Vasileios Giannakopoulos (Lancaster): Surfactant effects on plant water relations
4 – Katharina Huntenburg (Lancaster & NIAB): Using MRI to quantify soil and tuber water content of potatoes
5 – Andy Hirons (Lancaster & Myerscough College): Novel techniques for irrigating trees in the nursery
6 – Tony Peloe (Delta-T Devices, UK): Commercial developments in soil water instrumentation