Agriculture and forestry

A bioeconomy model farm for Brandenburg

Along with industry, agriculture is an important economic factor in the Land of Brandenburg. Almost a third of the total land area is currently used for agriculture. Huge quantities of residues are produced which can be used both materially and energetically. Establishing agricultural biomass as a raw material and making better use of it is a cornerstone of the bioeconomy. The State of Brandenburg now intends to invest almost 25 million euros in the bioeconomic future.

Training plants like athletes

Many plants die when they don't get enough water. Friederike Kögler has found a way to prevent this. She found out that plants can be trained like athletes. In her experiments she used targeted water stress to make corn plants get by with little water and still grow. In September last year, the doctoral student was awarded the Ernst Knapp Future Prize for this finding. 

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.

Genome analysis: The relatives of the grapevine

The vine, which has been domesticated for about 6,000 years, has about 60 wild relatives, including the European wild vine Vitis vinifera ssp. vinifera. It is regarded as the origin of viticulture with about 10,000 varieties worldwide. Many of these wild species are threatened and have not yet been genetically recorded. Chinese researchers have now analysed the genomes of 48 of these 60 species and also made use of a collection from the Botanical Institute of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

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).

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