Tess van de Voorde

Tess van de Voorde is a Researcher at the Biointeractions and Plant Health group within Wageningen University & Research (WUR), actively leading multiple agricultural research projects focused on soil-plant health dynamics. Her work integrates ecological principles with practical farming applications to enhance disease suppression and soil resilience.

Her research spans Soil Health (100% fingerprint relevance), Primary Productivity (56%), and Ecosystem Services (56%), with emphasis on Disease Suppression through biochar, soil amendments, and macrofauna management. She investigates how sustainable practices like cover cropping and soil biodiversity enhancement combat pathogens such as Pythium while maintaining grassland productivity. Recent projects target climate-resilient cropping systems and residue management in potato production.

Analysis of her 2024-2025 publications reveals strong interdisciplinary trends: 80% connect soil microbiology to agricultural outcomes, with recurring subfields including bioassay validation, viral ecology in wildlife, and keratin-based soil amendments. Her work consistently bridges laboratory findings with field applications, particularly in Dutch horticulture and arable systems.

Van de Voorde leads 9 LVVN-funded projects including Wool for Crop Resilience 2.0 (2024) and Increasing Climate-Change Resilience Through Diversified Cropping Systems (2025-2028), securing continuous grant support for soil health innovation. She actively disseminates knowledge through 13 oral presentations, 2 press features (including The Ancient Secrets of Black Soil), and the Handbook of Soil Biology and Disease Suppression.

As part of WUR's PE&RC graduate school network, she collaborates with the Soil Biology team on long-term experiments (LTEs) examining soil structure-function relationships. Her research group employs molecular and ecological approaches to develop field-ready tools for measuring soil suppressiveness, directly supporting Dutch agricultural sustainability initiatives.