Biography
Dr. Villamil identifies management strategies to improve soil health and productivity in agroecosystems by addressing the societal challenge of sustainable food production. She focuses on how changes in soil health brought about by agronomic practices relate to carbon and nutrient cycling, crop production, and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.
Research Interests
- Soil Health - Metagenomics
- Sustainable Cropping Systems - Agroecology
- Biometry - Statistics
Education
- Ph.D.: Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — 2005
- M.S.: Agricultural Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — 2007
- M.S.: Agronomy, Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina — 2000
- B.S.: Agronomy, Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina — 1995
Additional Campus Affiliations
Professor, Crop Sciences
Professor, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Recent Publications
Morales, M. E., Allegrini, M., Basualdo, J., Iocoli, G. A., Villamil, M. B., & Zabaloy, M. C. (2024). Winter cover crop suppression methods influence on sunflower growth and rhizosphere communities. Frontiers in Microbiology, 15, Article 1405842. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2024.1405842
Cooney, D. R., Namoi, N., Zumpf, C., Lim, S. H., Villamil, M., Mitchell, R., & Lee, D. K. (2023). Biomass Production and Nutrient Removal by Perennial Energy Grasses Produced on a Wet Marginal Land. Bioenergy Research, 16(2), 886-897. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12155-022-10488-0
Morales, M. E., Iocoli, G. A., Allegrini, M., Villamil, M. B., & Zabaloy, M. C. (2023). Response of root exudates and bacterial community to N fertilization and termination methods in Avena sativa L. as a winter cover crop model. European Journal of Soil Biology, 114, Article 103453. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejsobi.2022.103453
Qin, Z., Guan, K., Zhou, W., Peng, B., Tang, J., Jin, Z., Grant, R., Hu, T., Villamil, M. B., Delucia, E., Margenot, A. J., Mishra, U., Chen, Z., & Coppess, J. (2023). Assessing long‐term impacts of cover crops on soil organic carbon in the central U.S. Midwestern agroecosystems. Global change biology, 29(9), 2572-2590. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16632
Rai, T., Lee, N., Williams, M., Davis, A., Villamil, M. B., & Dokoohaki, H. (2023). Probabilistic Assessment of Cereal Rye Cover Crop Impacts on Regional Crop Yield and Soil Carbon. Agriculture (Switzerland), 13(1), Article 176. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture13010176