About This Project

Urban agriculture provides a number of benefits, including the shrinking of food deserts, reducing diet-related diseases, and strengthening community ties. However, it is limited by contaminated soils that are not currently cultivated for growing. Greenleaf Communities' new research will demonstrate cost-effective techniques to improve nutritional value and reduce contamination of fruits and vegetables grown in urban soils.

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What is the context of this research?

The Greenleaf Communities team seeks to quantify the nutritional value and concentration of toxic metals (mainly arsenic and lead) of plants grown in contaminated urban soils, both with and without calcium sulfate treatments. Earlier research has indicated that gypsum has a beneficial effect on treating contaminated soil, but further studies are needed to prove the relationship. Our work supports the actions of urban agriculture groups seeking to reclaim unused space in underserved communities. We hope to provide a cost effective solution for urban farmers to easily start growing on unused land.

We are expecting gypsum to reduce toxic concentrations in food crops. Our findings will be made public and distributed to urban agriculture groups across the country. Successful treatment of contaminated soils will bring food production closer to home for many underserved communities.

What is the significance of this project?

The best point at which to address chronic human illness is its source. This includes the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the soils in which we grow our foods.

Improving access to healthy foods is critical to dealing with poor nutrition. Environmental, behavioral and social factors all impact the prevalence of chronic illness.

One potential solution for low-income areas with high incidence of nutrition-related illness is urban gardens. However, an issue that hinders the solution is the frequent contamination of urban soil. Urban soils often have higher heavy metal concentrations due to contaminated industrial sites and vehicle exhaust.

It is important that urban gardens can be established to provide fresh, healthy foods to combat food deserts and imbalanced diets, while also ensuring that crops are not grown in contaminated soils. Our research team seeks to address the issue of contaminated soil, and develop alternative solutions to make urban farming a viable option for communities across the nation.

What are the goals of the project?

The funds will be used to support research by Dr. Pierre Jacinthe, Associate Professor of Soil Biogeochemistry at IUPUI, designed with the support of Dr. Britt Burton-Freeman, a program director of the National Center for Food Safety and Technology (NCFST) at Illinois Institute of Technology.

We will establish test plots using contaminated soils from Indianapolis and Chicago to grow several types of edible crops. Then we will harvest the plants from both control plots and plots treated with gypsum, and analyze their tissues for nutritional content and heavy metal toxins. The data will be used to generate best management practices for cultivating urban soils.

The funds raised on Microryza will be used to match a small grant from the Center for Urban Health at IUPUI. Your support will allow us to fund a graduate research assistant and soil and tissue testing.

Budget

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Test plots and contaminated soil sources have been identified for this project. This funding would be used to hire an IUPUI graduate research assistant to manage the test plots and collect samples at IUPUI. A portion of the funding will go towards testing the nutritional content and levels of toxic metals in the plant tissues.

Meet the Team

Dan Peerless

Affiliates

Bachelor of Science, Biology, Hanover College
Master of Environmental Management, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

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Team Bio

Dan Peerless is the Project Research Manager at Greenleaf Communities, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, that conducts primary research and applies the findings in ways that reduce environmentally-mediated causes of disease.

The primary researcher, Pierre-Andre Jacinthe graduated in 1995 from the Ohio State University with a PhD in Agronomy/ Soil Biochemistry. In 2004, he joined the Department of Earth Sciences at IUPUI where is now an Associate Professor of Soil Biogeochemistry. His research focuses on nutrient cycling, water quality and the exchange of greenhouse gases (GHG) between land surface and the atmosphere. He is leading two complementary research projects in the School Branch watershed in Central Indiana to evaluate the impact of gypsum application to croplands on water quality (Indianapolis Power & Light and Greenleaf Communities), and assess the nutrient trapping efficiency of a multi-flow constructed wetland (Veolia and KBW funding).

Dr. Jacinthe has just completed two USDA-funded projects as the principal investigator. The first project dealt with GHG dynamics in Midwest agro-ecosystems under no-till practices, while the second was an effort to model GHG fluxes in riparian zones of the White River watershed on the basis of landscape hydro-geomorphic attributes. Dr. Jacinthe has also worked on incorporating satellite imagery into aspects of his research dealing with regional GHG inventory. Dr. Jacinthe has been very active in the profession (published 40+ peer-reviewed articles, 4 book chapters, and numerous conference presentations), and continues to serve as journal reviewer, panelist for funding agencies, and Associate Editor for the Journal of Environmental Quality. He has just completed a month-long tour of research institutions in China and Vietnam in an effort to expand his research network and promote greater internationalization of the IUPUI campus.