Soil is full of amazing life with its own intrinsic value. Just like many other species, we humans benefit from it: Healthy soil not only provides food, feed, fiber and fuel, it also contributes to the stability of the whole Earth system. But living soils are at risk all around the world. So, in this […]

The list of how humans are causing trouble in the soil is pretty mind-blowing, kind of overwhelming. It’s connected to all that is central to our modern human societies – industrial agriculture, synthetic chemistry, city sprawl, global mobility and so on and on. In this episode, Matthias Rillig, Anja Krieger and their guests Maddy Thakur […]

If you dig out a handful of soil, or a whole bucket full, what do you see? Really, not that much? Well, yes, that’s one reason the study of soil is such a challenge. It’s a lot of stuff mushed together, crumbs, roots, dead stuff, critters. Soil is a very complex, intensely 3D-structured environment. How […]

In this episode, Anja and Matthias take you on an underground safari through the hidden jungle of the soil. And they’ve won some excellent scientists as tour guides. You’ll hear from Diana Wall about a tiny worm that is so tough it even lives in Antarctica or hot deserts. Richard Bardgett introduces you to collembola, […]

Hundreds of millions of years ago, plants started to colonize the land. But amazingly, they did this without roots. So how on Earth did these early plants feed themselves? It looks like they found some helpful friends: A group of fungi provided them with nutrients from the ground, fossils suggest. Today, the vast majority of […]

There’s a crazy place beneath your feet, a jungle of sand, silt, and clay, of solids and pores. Some of the most diverse and overlooked communities on Earth live here, in a world unlike anything we know – completely dark, of tiny proportions, and full of surprises. Even the air and water aren’t the same. […]

A project funded by the BMBF – Federal Ministry of Education and Research Last update: 18.12.2020 Project partners are Prof. Michael Schloter (Helmholtz Zentrum München) and Prof. Nicolas Brüggemann (Forschungszentrum Jülich) Motivation Microplastic has been shown to occur in a wide range of Earth system compartments, including in agroecosystems. We know relatively little about how […]

Matthias Rillig’s lab at Freie Universität Berlin is part of the Institute of Biology and the Berlin-Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research (BBIB). Our research focus is on plant and soil ecology, with most people in the lab working on fungi. We work with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, other root colonizing fungi ranging in functioning (including […]