The big picture: using wildflower strips for pest control
Sustainable Soils and Crops
Javier is carrying out research on nutrients and contaminants in soils and crops, and developing new ICP-MS methods and optimising existing methods to measure nutrients and other elements in soils and plant material. He has set up and run soil and hydroponic experiments. His skills include sampling, preparation, analysis and archiving of plant, soil and water samples from field and pot experiments. He maintains databases, including Endnote, literature, contacts, Docuport protocols, chemicals, equipment, group grants, crop and soil materials; and general computing. He trains others in lab techniques and H&S. He can also handle data and results in computer databases, and increase and optimise hyperaccumulator plant and seed stock for bioremediation programme. Javier does experiments on phosphorus soil processes and plant nutrition. As part of this work, he has further extended his skills by culturing plants under controlled conditions; he has also undertaken chemical analysis of plants and soils, especially in relation to relevant mass spectroscopy (MS) techniques, such as ICP-MS.