Question: what made you so interested in soil & how do you work with it?

Eoin Lettice answered on 11 Mar 2011:

Thanks for your question.
I suppose its just about following what interests you!
When I was in school, I knew I wanted to be a scientist. Towards the end of my secondary school time, I sort of figured that it was biology I was most interested in (I was awful at chemistry but loved physics too), so I went and studied biology in college.
Again, I didn’t know exactly what part of biology I was interested in – all I knew was that I wasn’t really interested in plants! Shows what I knew – because as soon as I started studying plants more closely I relaised how interesting they were.
Towards the end of my time in college it was plant pests that interested my most and many of them live in the soil. Thats where my interest for soil came from.
It’s an interesting thing to study because it’s got all of this physical, geological and chemical stuff going on as well as the biology, which I concentrate on. By seeing how the pests survive in the soil and whether there is anything in the soil that can control them naturally, we can think about ways of using those weaknesses to manage the pest without using chemicals – at least thats the plan!
Moral of the story: the more you find out and explore in science, the more hooked you become!

Eoin.