Can soil microbes improve agricultural sustainability?

Suitable for 14 to 19-year-olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom or shared with students online.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Biology and Chemistry.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• Synthetic fertilisers are currently necessary for producing enough food for the global population to survive, but they are known to contribute to greenhouse gas levels, contaminate water sources and increase soil acidity. This teaching resource explains the work of Dr Nathaniel Boyer, a biochemist at Washington State University in the US, who is working to find a more environmentally friendly solution.
• This resource also contains an interview with Nate. If you or your students have a question for him, you can submit it online – go to the article using the Futurum link below and scroll to the bottom of the page. Nate will reply!
• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Nate’s research, and tasks them debate whether synthetic fertilisers should be banned.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

If you like these free resources – or have suggestions for improvements –, please let us know and leave us some feedback. Thank you!