New paper in Science Advances: Microbial degradation of plastic in soil

Publication

Dagmar Woebken, Arno Schintlmeister, and Michael Wagner participated in a team of researchers led by Michael Sander at ETH Zürich, which was able to directly demonstrate for the first time microbial degradation of agricultural plastic in soil. Using state-of-the-art analytical methods, including NanoSIMS, they tracked the flow of carbon from the biodegradable polymer into carbon dioxide and microbial biomass. Biodegradable plastics could contribute to more sustainable agriculture in the future.