Wooster, OH | michel.36@osu.edu

Dr. Michel’s group conducts research in three areas: (1) Composting, focused on the recycling of food scraps, yard trimmings and manure, understanding and mitigating the impacts of contaminants such as herbicides, plastics and pathogens and understanding the effects of composts on the microbial ecology of soils and plant growing media, (2) Pretreatments to improve bioethanol production from corn and cellulosic feed stocks and biogas production during anaerobic digestion, (3) Bioprocessing for the extraction and purification of natural rubber and inulin from the roots of Taraxacum kok Sagyhz (TK), the Russian dandelion. He serves as the editor of Compost Science and Utilization journal, is a board member of the Organics Recycling Association of Ohio, serves on the USCC Persistent Herbicide Task Force, is the President of the Wayne County Sustainable Energy Network and is the Chair of the OSU Wooster Sustainability Committee. He teaches the Ohio Compost Operator Education Course, Solar Energy Systems and FABE courses related to biomass conversion. He has published more than seventy peer reviewed scientific papers and in 2011 received the Rufus Chaney award for Research Excellence from the USCC.

Workshop Title: How To Test Your Composts for Persistent Herbicides

Workshop Description: Compost producers need a low-cost test for persistent herbicides (PH) for finished composts. Laboratory testing of these active ingredients in compost is very costly due to the need to separate and detect PH at extremely low concentrations (less than 2.5 parts per billion (ppb)). In this half day workshop, students will learn how to use a simple bioassay kit that can test multiple compost samples for PH within 10-14 days. The bioassay kit uses garden peas, LED grow lights and includes spiked positive control and clean negative control media. It can be used in any room temperature environment. The kit has a small footprint, is highly sensitive to PH, and is low cost.