TDAI Core Faculty Member and Assistant Professor in Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering Margaret Kalcic has been named PI for four separate research grants. Spanning from the current year to as far as 2024, Kalcic will lead these efforts alongside teams of Co-Investigators, while awarding hundreds of thousands of dollars towards innovative and useful research in the field of Agriculture. The four major grants being lead by Kalcic are as follows:

Soil health and water quality nexus in sustainable agroecosystems. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) North Central Research and Education Grant

Spanning from October of 2020 to September of 2023, this research grant involves assessing water quality benefits of soil health practices through increased edge-of-field and in-field monitoring. The total award amounts to 250,000 USD and will include Co-Investigators Sundermeir, A., Shedekar, V., Martin, J., Islam, R., and LaBarge, G.

Assessing legacy phosphorus losses from fields and watersheds in the Western Lake Erie Basin. US. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Research Grant.

Active from April of 2020 to March of 2023, this opportunity will have Kalcic overseeing students and/or postdocs conducting collaborative work with the ARS units in Columbus, OH and West Lafayette, IN, as well as Audrey Sawyer at OSU. The researchers will also conduct several approaches at gauging the impact of legacy phosphorus in soils of farm fields and streams on phosphorus loads in the western Lake Erie watershed. The total award amounts to 191,025 USD and will include no C0-I collaborators.

Healthy Soils, Healthy Waters: Will Soil Health Improvements Mitigate Nutrient Loading To The Great Lakes? U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) Foundational and Applied Science Program Research Grant

This research grant runs from July of 2020 to June of 2023. Kalcic leads the watershed modeling process to improve simulation of soil health and its influence on nutrient export from farmland. The total award amounts to 500,000 USD and features a team of Co-I including Osterholz, W., Evenson, G., Shedekar, V., and King, K.

Quantifying the Water Quality Benefits of Integrated Conservation Practices. US. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Research Service (ARS)  Research Grant.

Finally, this major grant, as a collaborative effort, works alongside Kevin King and his ARS lab to quantify benefits of multiple conservation practices in-field and at edge-of-field. More specifically, a student and postdoc are partially supported on this project, which runs from September of 2020 to August of 2024. Total funding provided by this grant is 225, 254 USD and includes no Co-I.