Prof. Dr. Emmanuel Frossard

Emmanuel Frossard has been Full Professor of Plant Nutrition at the Institute of Agricultural Sciences at the ETH Zurich since 2000.

Prof. Frossard was born on August 9, 1960 in Cherbourg (F). He studied at the Department of Agriculture and Food Sciences at the Institut National Polytechnique Lorraine in Nancy, France (ENSAIA-INPL). After completing his doctorate at the ENSAIA INPL in 1985, he spent two years as a postdoc fellow in the Department of Soil Science at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. From 1985 to 1994 he was a lecturer in the Group for Crop Production at the ENSAIA-INPL before becoming Associate Professor of Plant Nutrition at the ETH Zurich in 1994 and full Professor in 2000. He has been from january to june 2013 visiting scientist in the group of BioGeoChemistry of Prof. PM Vitousek, Stanford University, USA. Prof Frossard is currently President of the steering committee of the Swiss National Research Program on soil (NRP 68).

Professor Frossard's group  addresses through its research and teaching the challenge of how to improve nutrient efficiency in productive agricultural systems. Its mission is to:

1. Understand biotic and abiotic processes controlling the release of nutrients from the soil solid phase or fertiliser to the soil solution and to the plant;
2. Develop concepts and tools for characterizing the chemical nature of nutrients in soils and fertilisers and for quantifying nutrient fluxes in the soil-fertiliser-plant system;
3. Develop integrated nutrient management schemes that are relevant to ecologically efficient agricultural systems in order to preserve and enhance the natural resource base and contribute to national and global food security.

The work of the group focuses on phosphorus (P), nitrogen (N), zinc (Zn) and cadmium (Cd). We have a strong expertise with the use of radioactive (³³P, ⁶⁵Zn) and stable isotopes (¹⁵N, ¹⁸O, ⁶⁷Zn, ¹¹¹Cd), spectroscopy (NMR and ICP-MS), and a variety of physical, chemical, biochemical and molecular methods. We work under laboratory and glasshouse conditions and in field experiments managed either by scientists or by farmers. In addition, we study “semi-natural” systems (forests, extensive grasslands) as models to understand the effect of climate and parent material on the chemical nature and dynamics of nutrients at ecosystem level.