ETH Zurich

The research of group is focusing on land use problems related to trace elements in soil and soil-plant interactions under trace element stress, including toxicity as well as deficiency conditions. Current projects deal with antimony contamination of shooting range soils, zinc bio-fortification of wheat grains through organic matter management, role of non-uniform plant root allocation in response to soil heterogeneity for zinc uptake by crop plants, factors determining cadmium uptake by cocoa plants, and export of heavy metals from agricultural fields coupled to sediment transport during water erosion.

My research is aimed at an improved understanding of processes controlling the biogeochemical cycling of trace elements with important human-health impacts, from the organism to the global scale. A further aim of my research is to predict the effects of climate and environmental change on these processes and on broad-scale distributions of trace elements in the environment.