MSU Syngenta Soil Health Partnership

Postdoc Katherine Naasko measuring
water infiltration rate

Soil sample collected for nematode community analysis
In 2023, MSU and Syngenta established a new Soil Health Partnership project, leveraging regionally relevant LTAR sites and on-farm partnerships across the Midwest. The project focuses on establishing causal linkages between soil health and agronomic and environmental outcomes. Over two years, soil health measurements will be taken at on-farm and LTAR sites in Michigan, Illinois, North Dakota, and Nebraska, allowing cross-validation of results between on-farm and research station plots.
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The project also aims to build a network of farms in Michigan to evaluate how varying types of agroecosystems affect soil health. It will provide soil health-focused services such as training modules, diagnostic packages (via the Soil Health Nexus platform), and one-on-one consultations with partners from Syngenta. In the long term, bridging connections between farms and research sites will lay the foundation for extending on-farm collaborations to LTAR locations outside Michigan. This will support the identification of key soil biological health indicators for diagnostic purposes, develop multi-year strategies to optimize agronomic and environmental benefits, and accelerate the assessment of soil health benefits from products and practices through identifying early indicators of long-term impacts. Additionally, this effort will help determine technical and social barriers to adopting soil health practices and foster their wider adoption by reducing uncertainty and risk.

Map of LTAR and long-term study sites (starred)​​​​​​​​​