Spatio-temporal analysis of crop rotations and crop sequence patterns in Northern Germany: potential implications on plant health and crop protection

Journal of Plant Diseases and Protection - Crop sequence patterns are considered as those schemes farmers apply within a single field to succeed crops over time, regardless of whether the same crop...     

Using selective herbicides to manage beneficial and rare weed species in winter wheat

Journal of Plant Diseases and Protection - Weed species within arable farming systems act as a source of food and provide habitat for various taxa at higher trophic levels. Using field experiments...     

Glyphosat – ein Herbizid in der Diskussion und die Suche nach dem „Notwendigen Maß“

Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicidal active ingredient in the world. In Germany, the distributed amounts have been doubled during the last ten years. There is public concern and criticism on this extensive use and use limitations are claimed. However, also loss of efficacy as reported from countries with high use intensity of glyphosate reduces long term use of these herbicides. Recently, scientific studies aimed to quantify the economic benefits of glyphosate to estimate the costs of losing or banning this herbicide. In this text, possibilities of reductions of glyphosate use in arable farming are discussed to obtain a necessary extent. It is pointed out, that those uses are preferential, that enable minimum soil cultivation that minimize soil erosion. Post-harvest applications have the potential for use reductions, due to replacement techniques such as soil cultivation that are available. Pre-harvest applications, which are targeted for crop maturation only, should not be used as a routine. It is suggested to seek for best management practices of glyphosate use.     

Growth Responses to Elevated Temperature and Reduced Soil Moisture During Early Establishment of three Annual Weeds in Four Soil Types

Journal of Plant Diseases and Protection - We investigated the effects of simulated prospective increased temperatures and reduced soil moisture during the vegetation period on the early growth of...     

Rewarding farmers for delivering vascular plant diversity in managed grasslands: A transdisciplinary case-study approach

Due to lack of appropriate economic incentives offered by current markets the provision of ecosystem services by farmers is poorly rewarded. This study aimed to correct for this market failure by establishing a regionally-scaled market-based payment scheme for ecosystem services. Payments to farmers were linked to ecological goods representing differently ranked quality-levels of vascular plant diversity that were used as proxies for ecological services derived from managed grasslands. To reward the provision of ecological goods, we designed a novel market-based payment scheme that comprised a combination of a payment by results approach with an auction mechanism. Our results demonstrated that an appropriately designed payment scheme at a regional scale could support farming systems that are managed for delivering ecological goods in addition to the production of market goods such as food and fibre. Hence, instead of maximising economic profit through high-input management practices farmers within the case-study region had, for the first time, the possibility to diversify their total income risk by producing verifiable ecological goods of grassland plant diversity.