17 November 2004 Soil Science Fellowship for Associate Professor

Associate Professor Hong J. Di of Lincoln University's Soil and Physical Sciences Group, Agriculture and Life Sciences Division, has been awarded a Fellowship of the New Zealand Society of Soil Science.

Associate Professor Di received the award today (17 Nov.) at a meeting of the society at Lincoln University.

The Fellowship acknowledges Associate Professor Di's outstanding contributions to soil science and his distinction as a researcher. 

His research has been particularly concerned with understanding the fate of fertilisers, pesticides and organic wastes applied to the soil.

For the past eight years he has been closely involved with Lincoln University's research on nitrification and nitrate contamination of groundwater in intensive grazing regimes. Together with colleague Professor Keith Cameron and commercial partner Ravensdown Fertiliser Cooperative Ltd he has been associated with the development of eco-n, a soil treatment to improve the cycling of nitrogen in the soil and reduce nitrate leaching.

Di and Cameron demonstrated that the bulk of the nitrogen that is deposited in intensively grazed pastures, such as in dairying, comes from animal urine, rather than the application of fertiliser. 

Associate Professor Di has been a staff member at Lincoln since 1995 after completing Master of Applied Science and PhD degrees at the University. Originally from China, he also holds a BSc from the Agricultural University of Hebei, near Beijing, and earlier this year he was made an Honorary Professor of China's Academy of Agricultural Sciences. 

In 2000 Associate Professor Di was awarded the NZ Society of Soil Science's M.L. Leamy Prize for the most meritorious contribution to soil science published in the preceding three years. 

The prize, which stamped him as New Zealand's top soil scientist that year, was for his significant contributions to knowledge about fertiliser, pesticide and organic waste interactions with the soil. His "breakthrough" work in this field enabled him to develop new decision support models to predict the leaching levels of nitrate and pesticides from soil.

Associate Professor Di teaches at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels and is currently supervising five doctoral and masterate candidates.

In addition he is Principal Scientist with the Centre for Soil and Environmental Quality, based at Lincoln University.

 
Ian Collins, Journalist, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand