Division of Agronomy

Division of Agronomy

Two of our scientists presented their work at the 22nd N Workshop in Aarhus, Denmark

21.06.2024: For one week in June, two scientists of our group spend a fruitful time at the N-Workshop in the wonderful city of Aarhus. The days were filled with talks and poster session about all the different aspects of nitrogen (N) in the agri-food sector. The conference was dealing with the dilemma of ensuring crop productivity and human nutrition through N fertilization, while aiming to decrease N losses leading to environmental pollution and climate change.

Paulina Englert gave a talk about the spatial and temporal variability of nitrous oxide (N2O) fluxes. She presented the results from 1.5 years of field work in the project INFLUX. In the focus of this project stands an Eddy Covariance (EC) Fluxtower equipped with an N2O analyzer, installed at the experimental farm of the University of Göttingen (Reinshof). The results were of big interest for the nitrogen community as EC-N2O measurements have only recently become commercially available and so far, there are only a few towers worldwide measuring N2O on crop lands. The biggest advantage of EC-N2O measurements is the high temporal resolution (half-hourly fluxes all year round). In this way we were able to detect high emission peaks after rewetting or freeze-thaw cycles that can easily be missed with manual chamber measurements but contribute substantially to the annual budget of N2O emission. Additionally, we observed the spatial variability of N2O emission after fertilization at 100 points around the flux tower with a mobile chamber. During one day they varied from 0.5 to 490 μg N2O-N m-2 h-1 and showed a correlation with the spatial variations in soil moisture. This highlights the second advantage of EC-N2O measurements, which is the spatial integration. In the future, EC measurements will help us to better estimate the N2O emissions from agricultural land and develop mitigation strategies.

Dr. Antonios Apostolakis presented an interesting poster about his work of the last 1.5 years in the TRUESOIL project. He explained: “The way we grow our food has serious implications for the environment. For example, shifting the tillage system from inversion ploughing to shallow harrowing is traditionally thought to promote soil organic matter. Could this be used to mitigate climate change? Maybe! But, first, we need to understand how different tillage systems affect greenhouse gas emissions not only today but, in a future, where extreme climatic events, like droughts, will be more frequent.” His results from our long-term tillage experiment Garte-Süd showed that 53 years of reduced tillage did not lead to higher soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks compared to conventional tillage, despite lowering SOC losses as CO2. In contrast, shallow harrowing was associated with a light yield loss and a higher risk of increased N2O emissions, especially under the conditions of a controlled drought experiment. To sum up, soil harrowing did not seem to have a climate change mitigation potential in fine textured temperate croplands.

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ApostolakisPosterAarhus
Dr. Antonios Apostolakis presenting his poster with the title „Soil CO2 and N2O fluxes under wheat and barley in a conventional vs. reduced tillage field trial in Germany”.

EnglerVortragAarhus
Paulina Englert presenting the preliminary results of her PhD thesis in the project INFLUX which deals with the spatial and temporal variability of nitrous oxide fluxes in a German crop rotation .

Paulina Englert receives the poster award at the conference of the Society of Agronomy

06 October 2023: Our staff member Paulina Englert receives the poster award at the conference of the Society of Agronomy for her poster contribution titled "Spatial and Temporal Variability of Nitrous Oxide Fluxes in a German Crop Rotation".

The poster shows initial results from the INFLUX project, in which she has been working on her PhD since September 2022. The data presented offer first insights into the evolution of nitrous oxide (N2O) after fertilization of sugar beet. Due to the increased availability of nitrate and moist soil conditions in spring, N2O emissions increased, despite the low nitrogen fertilization of only 60 kg/ha. The N2O fluxes (measured with the Licor-7820) showed a very high spatial variability which cannot yet be explained with the soil data analyzed so far. An even clearer peak of N2O emissions could be measured with the Eddy Covariance technique at the end of June induced by a heavy rainfall as well as rising temperatures after a dry period. The analysis of the Eddy Covariance data is currently being refined and we look forward to the results for winter wheat and insights into the underlying N2O producing processes in the soil.

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GPW23_Posteraward
Paulina Englert presents the certificate for the poster award in front of her poster.

64th Meeting of the Society of Agronomy in Göttingen

06 October 2023: In the first week of October 2023, the 64th meeting of the Society of Agronomy took place at University of Göttingen. For the 240 participants there were many opportunities for scientific exchange and networking during these intensive three days. The general topic of this year's conference was "DIGITAL TOOLS, BIG DATA, MODELING AND SENSING METHODS FOR SUSTAINABLE AND CLIMATE SMART CROP AND GRASSLAND SYSTEMS". The program focused on the important role that digitization plays regarding the development of a sustainable crop production, which is caught between food production, climate change and nature conservation. The plenary lectures addressed, for example, indoor farming or the use of artificial intelligence in crop production.

A total of 60 talks were contributed, which were integrated into 12 parallel sessions on the following topics: Grassland, Nitrogen Cycle, Nutrient Management / Carbon Cycle, Modeling, Soil management / Roots, Remote Sensing, Irrigation / Drought, Controlled and field experimentation - G×E×M, Adaptation to heat and drought, Crop protection / Biotic stress, Biodiversity and Precision farming. In the auditorium of the ZHG, it was in addition possible to discuss about more than 130 presented posters from all topics.

One of the highlights of the meeting was the conference dinner, which took place in the new research greenhouse of the Faculty of Agriculture. The greenhouse is nearing completion and will soon be ready with modern technologies for experiments on issues related to plant production. The conference concluded with an excursion to the experimental farm Reinshof of the University of Göttingen and to the experimental field of the Institute for Sugar Beet Research in Harste. During this excursion to Reinshof, there was the opportunity to present the field trials TRUESOIL and INFLUX which are conducted by the Division of Agronomy.

To promote young scientists, the Ernst Klapp Future Prize for the best presentation by a young scientist is awarded at each meeting of the Society of Crop Science. Among the 5 applicants, Martin Mittermayer from the Technical University of Munich (Chair of Organic Farming and Crop Production Systems) was chosen as this year's winner with his presentation "Sensor- and satellite-based analysis of spatial variability of soil and plant parameters and consequences for crop production".
In addition, a jury from the working group Young Crop Science selected the best of the 132 posters. The Poster Award was given to Paulina Englert (University of Göttingen, Department of Crop Sciences, Division Agronomy) for her contribution titled "Spatial and Temporal Variability of Nitrous Oxide Fluxes in a German Crop Rotation".

A big thank you goes to the whole team of the Division of Agronomy for the great organization of the meeting and the strong effort during the conference week! The conference will be held every two years now and the venue for the 65th meeting of the German Society of Crop Science in 2025 will be Halle (Saale).

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GPW_2023_Goettingen
The participants of the conference in the lecture building at the central campus.