Publications by authors named "F B Pitre"
Article Synopsis
- Arsenic in soils can harm people's health by getting into crops, so scientists are studying how plants like white lupin deal with it.
- The research showed that white lupin uses special substances (like glutathione and phytochelatin) to get rid of arsenic, but stopping the plant from making these substances made them more sensitive to arsenic.
- The study found two specific ways the plant handles arsenic and suggested that understanding how plants detoxify arsenic could help reduce pollution and make crops safer to eat.
Reducing the environmental impact of Canadian field crop agriculture, including the reliance on conventional synthesised fertilisers, are key societal targets for establishing long-term sustainable practices. Municipal biosolids (MSB) are an abundant, residual organic material, rich in phosphate, nitrogen and other oligo-nutrients, that could be used in conjunction with conventional fertilisers to decrease their use. Though MBS have previously been shown to be an effective fertiliser substitute for different crops, including corn and soybean, there remain key knowledge gaps concerning the impact of MBS on the resident soil bacterial communities in agro-ecosystems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMunicipal biosolids (MBS) are suggested to be abundant, sustainable, inexpensive fertilisers, rich in phosphorus and nitrogen. However, MBS can also contain glyphosate and phosphonates that can degrade to AMPA. Glyphosate-based herbicides (GBH) are used in field crops all over the world.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOrganic waste decomposition can make up substantial amounts of municipal greenhouse emissions during decomposition. Composting has the potential to reduce these emissions as well as generate sustainable fertilizer. However, our understanding of how complex microbial communities change to drive the chemical and biological processes of composting is still limited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Researchers studied the herbicide glyphosate to see how it affects composting at the Montreal Botanical Garden.
- They found that glyphosate didn’t really change the composting process or the types of bacteria present, and it completely disappeared by the end of the study.
- Some bacteria increased in number with glyphosate, while a few others decreased, but overall, glyphosate didn't seem to have a big effect on the composting bacteria diversity.