13 March 2009
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| Kim Mosse |
A Monash University PhD student has won an international scholarship prize that will enable her to research how Australian wine growers can become more water wise.
Kim Mosse, is enrolled through the School of Applied Sciences and Engineering which is based at Gippsland campus however her research is being undertaken at the Clayton campus through the Centre for Green Chemistry and the School of Biological Sciences. Ms Mosse will travel to California, one of the largest grape growing regions in the world, to research the effects of recycling winery wastewater for irrigation by measuring the health of soils and plants in the irrigated areas and surrounding regions.
The treatment of wastewater is a significant issue for the grape growing industry. Winery wastewater includes floor waste, cleaning rinse water, water used to wash equipment and solid wastes such as stalk, seeds and skins (marc), pulp, yeasts from fermentation and sewage. The wastewater is extremely polluting as it has a high levels of biological oxygen, a build up of salts especially sodium and potassium, and is difficult and costly to treat.
"In these days of water shortages the ability to reuse winery wastewater as an irrigation source would be of significant benefit to wine grape growers. There are many issues associated with such a practice, due to the variability in wastewater composition, different treatment practices, and the risk of causing long term damage to the soil and plant ecosystem," Ms Mosse said.
"I will use a variety of cutting edge molecular biological techniques to assess the effects that winery wastewater application has on soil microbial populations."
Awarded the prestigious Postgraduate Fulbright Scholarship, Ms Mosse will spend nine months at the University of California, Davis using the latest technologies in soil and water testing around the high-producing wine regions of California.
Ms Mosse said the United States, and in particular California, is the perfect location for her research.
"The research group that I wish to join at Davis has significant experience in both soil ecology and vineyard management and secondly the US is a major wine producer, which is also facing issues of wastewater management. It will be a valuable experience to work closely with the US winegrowing industry and to perform studies that are similar to those done in Australia."
Ms Mosse completed her undergraduate degree in science at the Gippsland campus and has won various awards and scholarships including the Sir John Monash Award, a Baden-Wurttemberg Stipendium (German state government scholarship, 2005) and the Australian Society for Microbiology Prize.
The prestigious Fulbright program is the largest educational scholarship of its kind, created by U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright and the U.S. Government in 1946. Aimed at promoting mutual understanding through educational exchange, it operates between the U.S. and 150 countries.
For more information or to arrange an interview with Ms Mosse, contact Samantha Blair, Media and Communications +61 3 9903 4841.
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