Pauline Mele

In 2006, Mele was the first female to be awarded a Senior Research fellowship by Land and Water Australia and undertook a global review of research in soil biology to develop a new charter for exploring Australia's 'hidden' natural asset, the soil biota. In doing so she proposed:

• Options for an improved framework for research investment in soil biology.
• A process that integrates soil biology knowledge into education and monitoring applications that have Australian regional relevance.
• An empowered community that can make better decisions regarding soil resource management.
• A process that integrates soil biology knowledge into policy decisions relating to sustainable land-use and ecosystem services.

In the same year, Mele was successful in winning a significant Victorian investment to collaborate with the J. Craig Venter Institute to study the microorganisms in agriculturally significant soils and in bovine digestive systems. It was the first time in Australia that the DNA of soil microbial communities had been sequenced to reveal previously unseen soil microbes. Mele is currently coordinating a National Soil Biology Initiative for the Australian Grains Research and Development Corporation and is also part of a team that is mapping the soil biodiversity across a diverse range of Australian soil biomes.[1]

Mele's research has focussed mainly on the microbial communities found in association with plants. The focus of her activity is usually in the diverse soils under agricultural crops and pastures or in the zone immediately surrounding the plant root (rhizosphere). Her interest is in understanding how the teeming mass of microbes found in these habitats work to improve the performance of plants either through enhancing their access to nutrients (mainly Nitrogen) or by protecting them from soil borne pathogens. The complexities of these microhabitats has warranted the use of high resolution techniques and the advent of DNA based approaches has revolutionised studies such as these, so much so that Mele's group relies almost solely on extracting the genetic material of soil microbes to provide the clues to how agricultural management impacts the performance of microbes and how in turn landholders can manipulate soil condition to encourage favourable microbial communities. Mele and her team could be seen travelling the southern cropping regions in a mobile laboratory that enabled on-site processing of samples, a critical requirement for capturing microbial features of interest as they exist in the field. Mele and her colleagues are now expanding their studies Australia- wide in a first attempt to classify and map the diversity of soil microbial communities found in its ancient and highly weathered soils, using DNA sequencing approaches. Mele believes that the significance of soil biology in contemporary agricultural systems is not well understood yet offers enormous potential in overcoming production constraints. She also believes that a much more integrated and collaborative research effort utilising grower experience and previous knowledge is the only way to achieve much needed agricultural productivity gains.

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