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In collaboration with International week, the ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Land Institute will be hosted the first ever live episode of the Land Use Podcast!

International week

International week is an annual event open to the ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ and the local community. The week consisted of a series of free events that provided an opportunity to engage with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Check out the website for more information.

The Podcast

Studies have revealed that soil and all of the complex systems that exist within the soil are being altered by our changing climate. This, in turn, is affecting our ability to grow crops and provide food security for our growing populations. Fortunately, research into sustainable agricultural practices is paving a path towards a more sustainable future. Join the ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Land Institute for the first ever live episode of the Land Use Podcast where postdoctoral researcher, Yuge Bai, will discuss how biochar may be able to improve soil health in ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ under future climate conditions.

Guest Speaker

Yuge Bai is a postdoctoral researcher in earth and atmospheric sciences at the ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ. Bai has been working in the field of soil science for almost ten years. Currently, she is researching the use of biochars made from the sewage sludge in the wastewater treatment plants as a soil amendment to enhance soil fertility and promote crop growth in ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ under future climate conditions.

The live podcast episode will be broadcast on February 5 at noon. Listeners will have the opportunity to engage with the guest speaker and ask questions. Also on February 5, International week will be screening the documentary 2040 at Metro Cinema at 6:45. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion about the documentary. Yuge Bai will also lending her expertise to the panel of experts.

Transcript:

Host: You're listening to the Land Use Podcast brought to you by the ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Land Institute.

Hello everyone. Welcome to the ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ's International Week 2025 and the first ever live episode of the Land Use Podcast. My name is Aysha Wu, the communications officer at the ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Land Institute. 

Before we hop into the rest of the podcast today, I would like to acknowledge that the ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ is situated on Treaty 6 Territory and respects the histories, languages and the cultures of First Nations, Métis, Inuit and all First Peoples of Canada whose presence continues to enrich our vibrant community. 

The format for today's podcast is a little different than usual. Since it is a live episode, you, the listener, will have an opportunity to participate in a question and answer portion. We will display a short URL and 8 digit code on the screen so to submit a question you can go to menti.com from any device and input the 8 digit code. To do so, you do not need an app or an account, so that should be easy enough to do. Our behind the scenes moderator will receive your questions and put them in a queue for me to ask our speaker as time allows.

So for today's topic, in keeping with this year's International Week theme of meaningful engagement with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which is just kind of behind here, we'll be diving into sustainable agriculture, which is also one of the ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Land Institute's research areas. 

So for today, post doctoral researcher Yuge Bai is joining me. Yuge is part of an ongoing research project led by Daniel Alessi that received funding from the Institute. We'll talk more about the project in a bit, but first, welcome Yuge! Thanks for joining me, do you want to introduce yourself?

Yuge: Thank you. Yeah. So everybody, hi, my name is Yuge Bai and I'm currently a postdoc researcher here at U of A and I work together with Daniel Alessi. And currently my research focuses on if we can potentially use biochar as a fertilizer for our soil in ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ.

Host: Awesome, thank you. So when we're discussing how climate affects agriculture, one of the major problems is the effect on soil. So can you talk about the ways that climate change affects the soil?

Yuge: Yeah. So  it impacts soil in like many different ways. I guess I can talk maybe for half an hour but you know, very often when we talk about climate change, what first pops into our mind, like, oh, it's getting warmer. But except this, it's way more than that. So climate change can mean like a hot place will be hotter, cold place will be colder and we will have maybe more rain and maybe dry place will become even drier. This also means higher CO2 and all of this influences soil itself, of course, but each component in soil as well, for example the microbes, the minerals, the nutrients. So if I conclude in one sentence, I would say it will make our soil less fertile also, which will make fertilizing, or how to make soil fertile, very important to face this challenge.

Host: Okay. And just as you're talking about that you know, we've kind of seen in ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ, especially over the last few years, drought significantly kind of affecting farming conditions and stuff like that.

Yuge: Yeah.

Host: That probably has a pretty significant impact on our soils here.

Yuge: Definitely. I mean soils supposed to be like a carbon sink. So it should fix carbon. It has way more carbon in soil than, to compare, to the atmosphere for example. But with the climate change, soil can turn from a carbon sink to more like a carbon producer to produce more CO2. Because, for example, the decomposition of organic matter or the more respiration of microbes in the soil when it gets warmer, which is a bad thing because one, it's like climate change makes soil release more CO2 makes climate change even worse, right?

Host: Oh boy.

Yuge: And nowadays some people say, like for example, the forest fire we saw over the past year, this kind of like a natural fixing of this problem. Because like burning, like the fire can kind of like fix carbon into soil.

Host: Oh, that's amazing.

Yuge: Maybe it's nature is so smart and this is like a strategy.

Host: Yeah it kind of balances itself out. That's interesting. I never thought of forest fires as being related to soil health, so that's that's really interesting.

Yuge: Yeah.

Host: So ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ does rely pretty heavily on. So what kind of effect might these changes in the soil have on our agriculture?

Yuge: So the question is like, is that is there any specific change for ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ soil or like agricultural soil?

Host: Yeah, yeah. What kind of change could the agriculture industry expect from our changing soil?

Yuge: Yeah. So of course, because I work more like fertilizer stuff, so I would start with this aspect. It's like basically, we expect less nutrients, right? Actually, if you look at the, let's say, let's say phosphorus content in our soil, it's not like we don't have phosphorus. But how available this phosphorus is to plants?

Host: Okay.

Yuge: Yeah, because many phosphorus is, like, fixed in mineralization form which is very hard for plants to really take it. So plants prefer something soluble.

Host: Oh, okay.

Yuge: Yeah. So it's like if we can just drink Coke, maybe we don't want to eat a very hard one month old bread or something.

Host: Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha.

Yuge: That climate change basically makes the limited phosphorus even less, or even less available to plants, and putting more inorganic fertilizer into the soil is not really good. Which is like what many people's using nowadays, like inorganic fertilizer for phosphorus and also for nitrogen for example. But they are not very easy for plants to really take. You dump a lot of it in, but only maybe 10 per cent really goes to the plants with like 90 per cent will just be leached out to the groundwater. Later, can go to other water bodies, and that's why we see a lot of this blossom of algae, like the green surface of water, which we call eutrophication.

Host: Right okay. So you've actually been working on a research project that proposes not Necessarily a solution. But something that might help mitigate some of these issues. What's the focus of your research?

Yuge: Yeah. So as I earlier said, what I'm currently doing is trying to see if we can use biochar as a potential fertilizer to maybe solve this problem or maybe just one approach.

Host: So what is biochar?

Yuge: Yeah. So biochar, you can see it as like the product of burnt biomass but it requires specific temperature. So normally we would say biochar is more like the product of burned biomass which the burning temperature should be higher than 300 celsius.

Host: Okay.

Yuge: Yeah. So it's just like if you look at it, it looks like charcoal.

Host: Interesting. It's a fairly new area of study from what I understand. What do we know about biochar so far?

Yuge: Biochar is like already, it's been studied for decades. So it’s not like something recently popping up, but also not like so old. But you know already, long time ago, some people would use ash like burned ash in their soil. Like this can be the first idea of biochar.

So biochar has some known benefits for soil. For example, you know in ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ some soil is acidic. So biochar can kind of like increase the soil pH, make it more like pH neutral and also, you know, biochar is very porous, has very porous structure. You can think of it as activated charcoal that people also put indoors to absorb any bad smell or anything. So it's kind of, so if you put in the soil, it kind of, like, provides more space because it provides these pores in the soil.

Host: Oh, interesting.

Yuge: Yeah, so some research has also shown that this can provide more space for the roots of plants to grow. Because you can imagine if, without biochar maybe the soil’s like this, but with it is more like this and then the root can go through it. So with the longer roots, plants can also be more healthy. And they also provide kind of like a space for microbes to live inside. Microbes have a roof above their head, so they tend also to be happier and healthier.

Host: Interesting that when you're kind of just talking about like compaction, it just makes me think of the no till policies that are – or practices that are very popular.

Yuge: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Host: It works well with those from the sounds of it.

Yuge: Yeah it can definitely be one approach to make up for the no till policy.

Host: So how does biochar differ from conventional fertilizer?

Yuge: Yeah. So it differs in many ways. So what we talk about like a commercial fertilizer, common commercial fertilizer first is inorganic, but biochar is like organic compound. What does this mean? It's like inorganic is something that is readily available, it’s there. But organic is something more complicated. It's larger, so the first thing we talk about, the advantage or the advantage of using biochar fertilizer is called slow releasing. 

So, you know in ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ now, not only in ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ, globally now, people always say try to use organic fertilizer rather than inorganic, similar idea as using a manure as a fertilizer because organic. It's bigger molecules. It takes longer, but it's slow releasing so it's better than just dump a lot there because, for plants, what they need is just at certain times just a little bit. So with biochar, the fertilizer is like they release a little bit, plants take, they release a bit, plants take. So the percentage of usage is higher.

Host: I feel like this kind of relates to the metaphor you were talking about. Was like you want to drink, like, a soda or something instead of, like, getting proper, like, nutrients.

Yuge: It's kind of like you take a food that maybe can last longer, yeah.

Host: Okay. Oh interesting. Are there any drawbacks to biochar?

Yuge: Definitely. That's also why the studies, the research that's still going on, right? One biggest drawback is just, take what I do as an example. We use this biochar from wastewater, right? So it can have toxic material. So it can have heavy metals for example. And if this heavy metal can be a problem for long term to the soil, to the plants we don't really know. And another very realistic problem is, like, if it's economic to make biochar fertilizer because, as we said, it needs very high temperature to produce it.

Host: Oh, okay.

Yuge: This may make the biochar fertilizer very expensive because it costs a lot of energy to make it. And also we need to think about the side product. So when you produce biochar, very likely you also produce gas compounds. So how this gas, for example, is like a greenhouse gas, right? So if you release it to the air, then you are basically contaminating the environment. But on the other hand, maybe you can recycle them and use it as a fuel.

Host: Okay.

Yuge: So yeah, yeah.

Host: Okay. So I understand you probably don't want to disclose everything about the study that you're working on, but you want to tell me a little bit about it?

Yuge: Yeah. So what we are doing now is like we look at one very specific biochar which we call sewage sludge biochar. So sewage sludge is kind of like, how do you say, the sediments in the wastewater basin. So in that basin, it normally remove like phosphorus, nitrogen, like all the things. And then we basically burn this sewage sludge to make it into biochar and now what I'm doing is like I am using this biochar as a fertilizers and I have two growth chambers. One is like to simulate current temperature. Another one is like to simulate future temperature. And I grow plants, so I grow two different ones, wheat ones, canola, and I have of course the control which is like I use like inorganic fertilizer. I also have plants where– crops– I just don't give them anything. So basically we want to compare like how the plants look like with biochar compared to those with the inorganic fertilizer compared to those with nothing.

Host: Oh, for the inorganic fertilizer one, that would be kind of to simulate the current growth conditions?

Yuge: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Host: Oh, interesting.

Yuge: Yeah. And of course, we also want to see how they differ between the current and the future climate conditions.

Host: Right.

Yuge: And also you know, the fertilizing strategy is also very important. For example, how much you put in, like when you put in, to which depth of soil you put it in. So these are all we are looking at.

Host: So when you're talking about, like, depths of soil, would that require some amount of tillage or?

Yuge: Yeah. So you know, the thing for biochar is that it's a very fluffy material. So it just, yeah, it's very light. So you can't, I would say you can just, like, spread it on the surface of soil but it may not be the best idea because maybe some of them you will just lose it in the air.

Host: Oh, just blow away. 

Yuge: Yeah. Exactly. So we are thinking of a little bit tilling is probably needed, but like how deep we are now doing, so of course it's like on the surface of the soil, don't like bury it there. But now we are doing like surface or just, you know like 2 cm, just a little bit, or 5 cm or 10 cm.

Host: Oh. So could, I'm just thinking about, you were talking about soil compaction. Would it potentially reduce the need for future tillage? So for tilling it into the soil, hypothetically, would we maybe not need to till in the future as much?

Yuge: You mean, like, future compared to current?

Host: Yeah, yeah, if we got biochar in there already kind of reducing the compaction and things like that.

Yuge: Yeah, probably. I mean, I don't know the answer for sure.

Host: Okay. Interesting. I did want to ask you about the choice to use sewage sludge. So what was the thought process behind that?

Yuge: Yeah. So you know, how do we use this sewage sludge has always been like kind of like an issue because strictly speaking, it's like a waste compound but their volume is large. Like actually I just read a couple days ago in Europe, like every year they produce like hundreds of tons of this kind of sludge. And like, what do you do? Like initially at the very, very beginning, people just dump it there. But this is a very bad idea because all the bad things can just leach out from it into the soil, right? 

Host: Okay.

Yuge: And then later, there's some other ways of doing it. Like people already thought about drying it by, like heating it up at some temperatures, but not so high, maybe 100 or something. But this also has problem because they produce some toxic gas and you don't really fix the toxic metals in the sludge.

So that's why, not us, but other people thought about converting it to biochar. So the current studies shows that if you burn at higher than 500 celsius, you kind of fix all of the heavy metals so they are not available anymore. So you can say they’re are not harmful, at least not for short term, to plants or to soil, but at the meantime you also carry that nutrients like potassium phosphate, nitrogen. And then this is where the idea comes from like, oh, then maybe we can put it back into the soil and use it as a fertilizer, so this achieves the recycle. Because you know, actually our daily life produce a lot of phosphorus to the water like detergent, anything, dishwasher, the dishwasher tabs, like they all have phosphorus, right? And this goes to the wastewater. So if we can recycle this phosphorus, that will be great because phosphorus is a non reproducible resource.

Host: Right. So I guess in that sense there's a lot of different kind of sustainability benefits to something like biochar.

Yuge: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely, yeah.

Host: Did you, I know that there's a bit of debate kind of around this, but did you want to talk about the potential of biochar to sequester carbon or be a carbon sink?

Yuge: Yeah, I mean, I know this idea is now like a super dominant, dominating like biochar can like absorb carbon and can like keep it there. But my opinion is I definitely think this is something possible. Like biochar has the potential, but I feel similar to many other research about biochar. With biochar as a carbon sequestration, I think one thing we need to focus on thinking about is what happens in the long term. 

Host: Okay. 

Yuge: Because you know, most lab like studies it's  like you do it for maybe three years, four years, five years maximum maybe for one PhD, but you don't do research for 20 years or 30 years. But if I am a farmer, for example, you tell me, oh, please put this in your soil to increase the fertility of your soil and it can also eliminate the CO2 level, then I would ask, okay, what happens to my soil long term, right?

Host: That’s hard. We can only really speculate, kind of based on these shorter studies, right?

Yuge: Yeah, yeah. Now I'm going to, I guess maybe some modellers can do something which I don't know, it’s like out of my expertise for sure.

Host: right. That makes sense.

Yuge: Because it's not very realistic for like people to run experiments for so long time. I do know labs, they’ve run a few experiment for 20 years or something which is very amazing.

Host: Oh my goodness. That’s a very long experiment.

Yuge: But if we are thinking something longer, like 50 years, like 100 years or something, it needs modelers, yeah.

Host: Yeah, which is you know, ideally something that we'd like to do, but..

Yuge: Probably. 

Host: We do have a question here that I'm gonna read out to you.

Yuge: Okay.

Host: This person says what can I do to turn my existing front lawn into a carbon sink? Would sewage sludge biochar help open my soil and green up the grass? Are there concerns with inhalation or with impacts on well water?

Yuge: Sorry, can you?

Host: Yeah, yeah, no problem.

Yuge: Okay.

Host: So the first one was kind of, so about the front lawn and turning into a carbon sink. Would sewage sludge biochar help open up soil and green up the grass?

Yuge: I mean my in– so I would say yes, yes definitely. Actually, there are already people trying to do this. In the front front yard and there's research that’s shown that biochar can actually, I'm not saying sewage biochar, but biochar, for example, made from, let's say, wheat straw– 

Host: Okay

Yuge: – or even just the ash like we talked can actually promote the growth of grass. And about if can turn into a carbon sink, I also think so, because generally by applying biochar or ash can increase the soil like the organic matter content in your soil.

Host: Are, so the second part of that was, are there concerns with inhalation or with impacts on well water with biochar?

Yuge: Hmm, that's a very good question. I don't really have – I can't talk too much about it because not really something I really personally look into, but I would say yes, there can definitely be concerns, yes. Yeah, especially with, what's that called, like if you water. If you water your lawn or water your like your field like there can be leaching going on. Yeah.

Host: Okay. Would that differ depending on what kind of biochar, maybe 

Yuge: Definitely. I mean it's, I guess it will depend on many things. What kind of biochar? How much you put there? What's their size? LikeIf they are, if you put, if you make them into powders or you just put the we call bulk biochar like charcoals, like big pieces, they all will influence. Yeah, but generally I would say yes, there can be the concern and there can be some impact on the well water, yeah.

Host: Okay. Is there biochar available for people to buy to use in their gardens?

Yuge: Actually yes. I even know there's a company in Calgary. They produce biochar. 

Host: Oh, interesting. Just out of curiosity, do you know what the biochar is made out of? I assume not sewage sludge, but.

Yuge: I think no, not sewage sludge. Sewage sludge is kind of like we are not so sure about it. Yeah, but you know, for example, we burn like straws, right?Like wheat straws and, you know, some biochars even can be made from anything, literally like coffee beans, for example.

Host: Really? Oh my gosh.

Yuge: You grind the coffee powder, you use to – you can make your own biochar at home, you know. Like if you want but you need a very high temperature. But literally some biochars made from the coffee powder after you make coffee, and, for example, peanut shells after eat the peanuts. Like literally anything, any biomass can be made into biochar.

Host: Are you able to talk about kind of the different pros and cons of using those different materials for biochar? Like how much does it affect what the biochar can do for the soil?

Yuge: Yeah definitely. So you know, they can be really different because they must carry nutrients, right? So we are thinking, for example like wheat straw biochar can have some potential to be a really good fertilizer. Actually, many research have been done on wheat straw biochar and it does many benefits to the soil because you know you need to burn the straw anyway so why not recycle it, right? And compare to, for example sewage biochar, wheat straw biochar doesn’t contain so much like toxins. It's more like, it's greener.

Host: Oh, interesting. Okay.

Yuge: Yeah, yeah.

Host: So do you want to talk a little bit more about the process of creating biochar? I know you're talking about some of the drawbacks, but is the offset of the benefits for biochar going to offset the drawback of like burning and?

Yuge: Yeah, I guess so. So, I mean, now one direction of research is that people's trying to look at like how they can recycle all the side products of biochar. The gas for example like what can you, how can you make a use out of it. So normally biochar is made in the lab, it's like made into furnace. So basically you just put whatever you have, the material, in a tube and it's normally burnt under like anoxic conditions. So you give it nitrogen gas or something. 

That's also why on the other hand, I say it can be a costly process, right? And it requires high temperature and you know sometimes people would also put other products or some other compounds to burn the biochar at the same time. For example, some people, for the sewage sludge biochar, they suggest to add iron in it to like , you know, fix the toxic metals to make the phosphorus nutrients more stabilized. So there can be many different approaches. But our key question, or at least one we look at, our key question is how we can make it the cheapest to make in order to really promote biochar fertilizer to the market.

Host: Of course, because not everyone can afford to consider the more expensive options.

Yuge: Exactly because in the end, as for example as a farmer, all I need is like to make money in the end. Like if one, if the inorganic fertilizer is like this and your biochar price is this, then nobody will –

Host: You’re probably going to choose the cheaper one, right?

Yuge: Yeah, exactly. So when people look at the production, they always try to say, okay, what’s the lowest temperature that I can use? What's the least gas I can use?

Host: Yeah, absolutely. We do have a couple more questions. So this one says coffee grounds. Is there any advantage to turning grounds into biochar over composting them?

Yuge: Oh, that's a very good question! Okay, so I got it. I guess, yeah, so you can also just, I guess, just put your coffee powder like there.

Host: In the garden. I think a lot of people do that, right?

Yuge: Yeah, but you know, like generally speaking, if you're turn it into biochar, you kind of turn into a more stable form and that can last for longer instead of, just put the powder there. This is also what's the advantage of biochar compared to ash.

Host: Okay, interesting.

Yuge: Yeah because even you look at them just, like if you directly see ash is just like powder there, and you put them there, you see wind come, blow away and yeah. But like if you look at charcoal, it's like a bigger piece. And your nutrients, your organics are kind of like retained in there. And if you then put in the soil then like you expect things to last longer. And again, back to what we said before, there are also other benefits of biochar. For example biochar compared to your coffee powder will have higher pH and when you put this in your soil, if your soil suffers acidic problem, it will increase the pH. Also, again, we said that biochar has pores so it can open up your soil and make your soil has more space to, for the air for the water to flow and for the roots to go in to protect the microbes. These are all advantage of biochar compared to just the powder.

Host: Okay. That makes sense. Just out of curiosity, because I would think that with something like coffee grounds it has to decompose. Would you potentially see faster results with something like biochar?

Yuge: Sorry, like uh…

Host: Biochar versus coffee grounds, cause the coffee grounds have to biodegrade and everything, would the biochar, would you see faster results if there's biochar instead of coffee grounds?

Yuge: Faster results of what, sorry?

Host: Of like better crops. Like can your crops use that faster?

Yuge: Hard to say

Host: Hard to say. Fair enough! So another one here. How does sewage sludge, biochar impact or interact with soil bacteria, fungi and worms?

Yuge: Oh wow. Okay, that's a very scientific question. So I would say no matter what kind of biochar it is, it interacts with microbes a lot. I will just say microorganism including all of these things. Of course, each of them is different. I am not really an expert with fungi. I work with microbes, so I will talk a bit more about microbes. 

So It works physically and chemically. So physically, like I said, it provides house like for microbes basically. And then chemically of course, first, they are carbon. So they are like life resource for microbes. So they produce nutrients for the microbes, so microbes can just directly use them as a carbon resource, of course, and also whatever other nutrients the microbes basically, have access to it. 

And there can also be other more indirect impact. For example, there can even be studies saying, like for example, some microbes ,they eat iron instead of organics, right? Especially under anoxic conditions, when the soil is, for example, flooded with water. And but iron’s like a very insoluble mineral, so there's not like any flying iron there for the microbes to just catch and eat. So when there's distance, some studies even show like this biochar in the soil can help the microbes to have access to the iron by transferring electrons to the iron. They are kind of like I don't know is that like electricity? 

Host: Oh, that's really cool! I think they did also mention, I don't know if you know about this, but like insects? How it might interact with insects?

Yuge: Yeah, I actually can't talk much about it, similar to like fungi because I just simply don't work there. But if I just think about it, I guess it can also provide home for worms for example. But I have to say, depends on the biochar. Sometimes they can also be a toxic compound to the microbes or fungi or worms definitely. If they carry too much toxins, tt may also do harm.

Host: Okay. That's good to keep in mind. Do different types of plants react differently to biochar? Example: Grain or legumes or flowers.

Yuge: Okay. That's another very interesting question. So I can tell you already based on our experiment, I said I grow canola and wheat. They react quite differently.

Host: Oh really?

Yuge: So yeah, but I'm still trying to read more about why potentially because I never studied plant in the past. 

Host: Okay

Yuge: And I've also read so many papers using different biochars on different things from grass to like a rose to like crops and I would say they are very different how they react. I and there's not a general thing. I can't say generally grass reacts better than canola to biochar. It really depends. It even varies depends on the species of crops you have – the species of, not crop, but species of canola you have or wheat you have. Each one can be different.

Host: Oh, okay.

Yuge: Yeah, but I'm sorry I can't talk about the mechanism.

Host: Fair. I mean, you might not want to share this yet but are you seeing any interesting differences so far that you want to talk about, or did you want to?

Yuge: It's quite interesting. So overall, I would say our wheat is like growing better with biochar as a fertilizer compared to the canola, yeah.

Speaker: Oh, interesting. Okay. We have another one here that says how long does biochar sequester carbon compared to compost or wood chips?

Yuge: Yeah, I would say because it's also not like the main focus of my research to look at carbon sequestration of biochar. But I personally would say they can like sequence longer CO2 compared to wood chips and – what’s the other one?

Host: They also say compost.

Yuge: – and compost, probably. Yeah. Yeah, it's just my feeling, and also what I've read but. Because if you think about it, very just very simply think about it, biochar has all these pores, right? And they can already, people believe like these pores kind of like opens up space that can, like, retain a lot of CO2. But of course, the sequestration of CO2 it’s like a chemical reaction. But with these pores they can already like attract more CO2 into it. Yeah.

Host: Okay. just kind of talking about it. Can biochar be used in combination with compost?

Yuge: Oh yeah definitely. Actually, there's even studies showing that the two of them working together is even better.

Host: I guess what are the main differences between using something like compost or something like biochar?

Yuge: I guess I would say first is like compost is like so easily available, readily available, right? So many people many people use it. It's definitely a very, very good idea. Almost like this, we talked about the organic fertilizer, right? But again, like the general idea of why we want to make things into biochar instead of just putting it, there is again what we mentioned because it also brings other benefits, right? For example the pore structure makes your soil more porous, increase the pH of course, which most like manure or compost like may not do and also you know like your carbon’s like more complicated, your nutrients like more retained there so it lasts for longer. That’s the general idea.

Host: Okay. Interesting. We have another one here. If biochar opens up clay soils, can it also help in sandy soil?

Yuge: Yes, it can help in sandy soil, but in a little bit of a different way. Because the biggest problem with sandy soil is that the water flows too fast. It’s like whoosh and it's gone, right? We don't want this. But you know biochar, it's porous but it retains water way better than sand. Because it's porous, but it has a structure, so water still need to go through it. If you imagine a charcoal like your water goes through it very, very slowly, right? It’s not like whoosh. So yes, it definitely helps with sandy soil, but it's because it can retain water better, but of course it also provides space.

Host: I guess kind of along those lines, what are the main benefits that biochar can offer to soil during drought is it mostly just holding on to water? Are there some other benefits?

Yuge: Ah yes, so the most straightforward one is of course, it holds water. I'm just trying to think if there are other, I mean, because like in nature, reaction is always not only one thing, you know? If you think about more water that comes with many other consequences. So I would say yes, like because they retain more water. So yeah, it brings many other benefits to the soil as well.

Host: Yeah, yeah, I guess the thing about those kinds of things is we don’t know everything yet?

Host: Another thing that kind of came to mind is some people practice, you know, integration of like crops and animals. You may not be able to answer this, but do we know anything about how biochar might interact with like livestock or anything like that?

Yuge: Yeah, this I have no idea what it is. I guess I can't say anything about that. It's very interesting because sometimes we only look at this, and then as well, oh, there are the livestock, yeah.

Host: Yeah. Yeah, we. You know, it's kind of a whole system. So I guess these are areas of future study that people can look at.

Yuge: Yeah, I guess so, yeah.

Host: Would you say that biochar is primarily for like agricultural use, or is it also quite beneficial for like home gardens and things like that?

Yuge: It can also definitely be beneficial for home gardens. Actually I guess nowadays, right now maybe more people are using it for home gardening than for agriculture.

Host: Oh really?

Yuge: Because again, it's a costly thing.

Host: Right.

Yuge: So for home garden a little bit? You’re like yeah, fine.

Host: You’re not looking at purchasing on a huge scale.

Yuge: Yeah, but for the huge scale, we still need studies.

Host: Okay. And more affordable options.

Yuge: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Host: I don't know if you want to get into the biology a little bit more. What is the biochar doing to like, roots or anything like that?

Yuge: I also wouldn't be able to talk too much about that because I think like what I know about plants is like really limited.

Host: Right.

Yuge: So but like I guess what I know, or what I can say, is like first of what we already said, it gives space for roots to grow right? And also another thing, I guess, it's like to provide nutrients, but this is like, generally, more like for the whole plant. But I do read some studies who talks only about how biochar changes the environment of the rhizosphere, so the roots area. So there's a very specific study area just to look how biochar changes the air environment for the roots and how this further influence the plants. So I guess it definitely does a lot for the roots. Yeah.

Host: Yeah, we're just going to grab a couple more here before wrapping up because we're getting pretty close to the end. Do you hope to take this research further and perhaps start a company that will make these products available? Are you going to start a company?

Yuge: That would be great. I mean, yeah, maybe one day. You never know but. What we are going to do next, or we are thinking of doing together with the ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Land Institute funding is that we will bring it from out from the lab to a real field, right? So that would be the first step because now they are growing in pots so.

Host: Very controlled conditions, right?

Yuge: Very controlled, yeah. So that they are greenhouse pot flowers now basically. And it's very different from what we see outside, right? So for example, we also wouldn't know like well, I apply biochar in spring.

Host: Yeah.

Yuge: But now we have, like minus 30 something in winter with all the snow and so what happens to the biochar. Will they still be available next year? Will they still retain nutrients? What happens with the thaw?

Host: Are they affected by the freezing?

Yuge: Yeah probably. We never tested such things like this, so if we really want to use it in ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ soil, we want to go to the field and use, like to do it on our soil with like whatever weather conditions. 

Host: Of course. Make sure it's applicable in an ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ context, yeah.

Yuge: Yeah exactly.

Host: I've got another one. If we were going to try to make biochar at home, what would the best process be and how much should we use?

Yuge: Wow. Okay, so one thing you'll need to know is like the production rate of biochar is not like that high because it’s a very light material. And I can't imagine how you want to produce it at home, I guess like –

Host: Firepit or… maybe?

Yuge: With fire, yeah, but I can't imagine what kind of place allows you. Maybe in your backyard? Yes, with fire. Yeah. And then I cannot tell you how much material, because it really depends on how much you really want to have in the end but dump a lot.

Host: Have a big bonfire.

Yuge: But you want it to be a nice surface. So if you make something like a hill and you burn it, you don't burn through the inner part will never ever be burned. So you need to make it flat.

Host: Smooth? So it burns evenly?

Yuge: Yeah, like a smooth surface. Yeah, yeah.

Host: Okay.

Yuge: I feel it’s difficult to do it at home, maybe not. But if you really want to try…

Host: I guess you can play around with it a little bit.

Yuge: Yeah.

Host: Another one, are there other U of A projects that you know of that would be interested in, or interesting to collaborate with concerning your research?

Yuge: Oh, that's a very interesting question. Maybe this person had something.

Host: Yeah! A suggestion.

Yuge: Yeah, that, yes, we are already collaborating with others. For example, we are collaborating with people working very specifically on climate change to look at what weather patterns going to change and we are collecting data from these modellers to see how they predict the CO2 level, the temperature, everything, the precipitation pattern, how they going to change. And we are also collaborating with, we hope to collaborate with people from biology because as I say, like we have limited expertise with the plants. So yeah, I mean, we always want to collaborate. That’s how science works?

Host: Absolutely. And that's how we find out all of these questions that we don't have answers to about, you know, like, I don't know, animals, fungus or something like that, right?

Yuge: Yeah, yeah.

Host: Well, I think I'm just going to start to wrap us up here just so we don't run out of time. But that's mostly it for today, but there are a lot of other exciting International Week events happening throughout the week, so make sure to check out the events page. Tonight actually, there's going to be a screening of the documentary 2040 that explores some of the innovations and technologies that could support our journey towards net zero in the future and reversing the effects of climate change. Yuge will actually be there to provide her expert commentary on the themes of renewable energy during the panel discussion that will follow the screening so if you're interested in that, it's going to be at 6:45 at Metro Cinema, so head over to the event page to register for that. You can also check out the online program for that at uab.ca/iweek and that's also where you register. 

If you want to learn more about the ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Land Institute, you can head over to uab.ca/ali. We have our Instagram, our X our Linkedin, we've got all of our podcast episodes. So you can check those out and learn more about land use and thank you so much Yuge, for joining me today. Thank you everyone for tuning in. 

Yuge: Yeah, thank you!