Agriculture sciences

From vanilla crescents to pepper nuts: Cookies and pastries are very popular at Christmas time. Many of these treats contain imported spices that only grow in faraway countries like India. As an alternative, vanilla and pepper could soon also thrive in domestic indoor farms. Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences has now paved the way for this. After two years of construction, the "Indoorfarm - Agricultural Systems of the Future" research center was officially opened at the Haste campus at the end of November.

Agricultural and forestry raw materials and residues have enormous potential for a sustainable bioeconomy. These include waste such as bark, wood residues, straw or grass, but also plants that grow on meadows and pastures. The utilization of grassland cuttings for the bioeconomy in the sense of a circular economy is the focus of the ProGrün project. Researchers at the University of Hohenheim want to establish the proteins contained in grassland cuttings as a new resource - for example, for animal feed, food or platform chemicals.

The DFG has been supporting cutting-edge research at German universities for years. In the coming year, more than a dozen new collaborations will again be funded: The research organization is making a total of 166 million euros available for 13 Collaborative Research Centers (CRCs), initially for the next four years. Bioeconomy research will also benefit from the millions in funding.

More than half the world's population lives in cities, and the numbers are rising. Climate change and its consequences, including heat waves and heavy rainfall, make life in major cities increasingly stressful. There has long been research into how metropolises can protect themselves from such weather extremes in the future. Experts see one way of improving the quality of life for city residents in the greening of facades.

Hemp is one of the oldest crops in the world. The various parts of the plant are used to produce textile fibers, building materials, fuels, medicinal products and foodstuffs. As many uses hemp has, as numerous are the residual and waste materials that are produced during processing. Leaves and blossoms, hemp hurds, hemp dust or even extraction residues from hemp oil production are hardly ever used. Researchers at the German Biomass Research Center (DBFZ) and Hanffaser Uckermark eG want to change that.

Fertilization practices, monocultures or animal husbandry are to blame: With a share of 8% of Germany's greenhouse gas emissions, agriculture is a major contributor to climate change. At the same time, the agricultural sector is feeling the consequences of global warming among the hardest. Thanks to the breeding of new varieties, agricultural productivity has been demonstrably increased. However, it was previously unclear what effect the advances in plant breeding in recent decades have had on the carbon footprint.

Former dumps from landfills or mining operations often resemble moonscapes and revitalization of such areas can take nature decades. A research team has now shown that it can be done more quickly: Using biogenic residues, the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems (IKTS) and its partners have brought a landfill site in the Leipzig area back to life within a short period of time. The project involved landfill operators, sewage sludge recyclers, special machinery manufacturers and agricultural experts.

When people see a farm today, only few think of agriculture's actual task of producing vital food. Instead, younger people in particular associate it primarily with problems relating to animal welfare, nature conservation and climate protection. The RESPECTfarms project aims to change this - by developing concepts for how farms can produce cultured meat instead of traditional livestock farming in the future. Cultured meat is produced by multiplying animal cells in a bioreactor. Animals do not have to be kept or killed for this purpose.

Known as Chinese reed, Miscanthus grass is a hardy and undemanding plant. Once introduced to the field, it grows for decades - even on contaminated and abandoned soils. The plant also produces a great amount of biomass, which is suitable for the production of sustainable chemicals or building and insulation materials, as well as for energy use. Such use of miscanthus for bioenergy production was the focus of a project involving researchers from the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Forschungszentrum Jülich and Hunan Agricultural University in China.

Large quantities of climate-damaging greenhouse gases are released in agriculture every year as a result of livestock farming and fertilization practices. Criticism focuses on the introduction of excessive nitrate levels into the soil through nitrogen fertilizers and the import of feedstuffs such as soy from abroad. According to the German Federal Environment Agency, agriculture was responsible for about 8% of greenhouse gas emissions in this country in 2021, according to initial estimates. The cultivation of industrial hemp could reduce this problem.