One of the newer CRDC funded projects at UNE, in collaboration with NSW DPI, has us looking at different types of Carbon and microbial diversity and funcitons down the entire cotton soil profile. Well, to 1 m at least. Part of the challenge of doing this is that you have to get soil from depth out of the field and ideally you also want to be doing it when there are plants there to. Of course, if someone’s growing a crop the last thing they want is for you to flatten it with a tractor or trailer as you drive your coring rig into the field. To address this UNE recently acquired a more portable coring rig and it was put through its initial workout last week at ACRI as we sampled one of the long term rotational trials there. I think the team would say our three days in Narrabri  was a success as well as a great upper body and abdominal workout and were more than pleased with the quality of the cores we recovered. I know they are all looking forward to January with glee as they analyse the current suite of cores and we’ll keep you posted on the results as well as our next excercise plan.

The easy bit. Ivanah and Eckhard drive in the coring tube.

The not so easy bit. Katherine and Eckhard pulling the core out from some very dry soil under wheat

The fruits of our labour. Nellie, Katherine and Ivanah disecting the core for later analysis.