Agriculture sciences

Getting the best from biowaste with worms

Earthworms are not everyone's cup of tea. But the small animals living in the soil have their virtues: they loosen up the soil and thus ensure better water and nutrient uptake by the plants growing there. On their way through the soil, they also consume huge amounts of organic material, which is ultimately excreted as humus. NOKE founder Michael Quintern took advantage of the characteristics of these natural soil conditioners.

How plant roots communicate

The Danish plant physiologist Tonni Grube Andersen is one of this year's winners of the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. With the award money of 1.65 million euros, he is setting up his own research group at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne. Andersen is particularly interested in how plants interact underground with their surrounding root microbes. Tonni Andersen moved to the University of Lausanne in 2014 as a postdoctoral fellow with a Marie Curie fellowship.

FiBL and IFOAM (2018): The World of Organic Agriculture

Therefore, the positive trend of recent years continues. The demand for organic products is growing constantly and more and more producers switch to organic agriculture.  Data on organic farming from 178 countries were evaluated.

The statistical yearbook on global organic farming is published jointly by FiBL and IFOAM - Organics International. The data collection on organic farming worldwide is supported by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO, the International Trade Center (ITC) and NürnbergMesse.

Massive field study supports insecticide ban

Studies have shown that insecticides from the neonicotinoid group are responsible for bee mortality. Three out of five such preparations are therefore banned in the European Union for use in the field - and rightly so, as an international study involving the University of Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) has now shown. However, the insecticide clothianidin does not impact honeybees as much as wild bees such as bumble bees.

Turning off the potato's thermostat

Balmy summer nights and hot days? What vacationers love, potatoe farmers fear. At 29 degrees Celsius during the day or 27 degrees Celsius at night, potato yields plummet. The nightshade plant reacts sensitively to heat and stops tuber formation if temperatures are too high. The highest yields can be gained at 21 degrees Celsius during the day and 18 degrees Celsius at night. In times of climate change, this could become a problem. But now, scientists have discovered the potato's thermostat and managed to switch it off.

Comeback of the yellow lupin

While the Blue Lupin is celebrating its comeback, the Yellow Lupin has almost disappeared from the fields in this country. The reason: the fungal disease anthracnosis brought the cultivation of Lupinus luteus to a standstill in the early 1990s. "The fungus attacks the plant's vascular vessels and thus interrupts the supply of nutrients. The plant dies, which can lead to total crop failure," explains Brigitte Ruge-Wehling from the Julius Kühn Institute (JKI).

New parsley virus discovered

Parsley is one of the most popular culinary herbs. It is rich in essential oils and vitamin C and is ideally suited for refining salads and savoury dishes. But the herbaceous plant is currently causing gardeners problems: it will not grow. Plant virologists from the Leibniz Institute DSMZ - German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures GmbH in Braunschweig - have now found the cause.

Healing plants with nanocapsules

Nano-carriers that are loaded with active substances and release these straight to the diseased cells are already in use in cancer medicine. Now this "magic bullet" could soon also cure plant diseases. A team led by Frederik Wurm from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPI) has been working for several years on establishing this treatment method for diseased vines.

Field robot helps with weed control

Chemical herbicides have long been the panacea against unloved plants in the field. However, the use of pesticides such as glyphosate has long been controversial and the consequences for the environment - especially biodiversity - are alarming. In addition to new resistant plant varieties, researchers are therefore working on new technologies to counteract the trend with environmentally friendly methods.

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