Overlap of food and the Danish list of threatened species (red list) can help to guide action plans and management of bees in nature areas in Denmark, new research from leading European bee researchers from Aarhus University, among others, shows.

Using a medical CT scanner in a laboratory experiment, researchers have assessed the ability of five crops to loosen heavily compacted soil caused by heavy machinery. Long-term cultivation of lucerne and chicory show great potential for mitigating subsoil compaction.

During his PhD studies, Triven Koganti investigated a variety of proximal (Ground penetrating radar, Magnetic gradiometer) and remote (Unmanned aerial vehicle imagery captured using different cameras) sensing technologies to discern their potential in mapping agricultural subsurface drainage systems (popularly known as “tile drains”). Triven Koganti conducted research both in Denmark and the Midwestern United States on a wide range of soil types as the drainage practices, especially the drainage pipe diameters that are typically used differ between Europe and the U.S.A.

As a policy support response to the Danish Agency for Agriculture, researchers from Aarhus University have created a model that, based on air temperature, can estimate harvest dates for spring barley and winter wheat. And in an article in "Field Crops Research", the same researchers have used the model to show how the harvest date for crops can be used as a basis for assessing the growth of cover crops and thus the ability to reduce nitrate leaching.

The annual report on Applied Crop Protection has just been published with the latest results from pesticide testing and other forms of crop protection.

The work with the establishment of reference conditions in Danish coastal waters has so far been based on the distribution of eelgrass around 1900, and current measurements of nitrogen concentration in watercourses with virtually no agricultural activity, as well as estimated historical national nitrogen balances. In a new publication in the international journal Ambio, researchers from Aarhus University review the problems surrounding the assumptions about low nitrogen emissions from agriculture around 1900. In addition, they propose an alternative method, which is based on land use at parish level, collected around 1900, combined with measurements from contemporary field trials with the year 1900-relevant cultivation, as a starting point for calculating nitrogen emissions.

Join us for a webinar on the ResidueGas project on 3 May 2021. You can meet researchers from most of Europe and learn more about crop residues, their impact on greenhouse gas emissions, and how they are otherwise handled sustainably in plant breeding.

One of the main threats to the quality of agricultural soil in Europe and elsewhere is soil compaction. During her studies, Loraine ten Damme studied processes of soil compaction, in particular tyre-soil interactions and soil response as affected by tyre evolution, traction and repeated wheeling. Loraine investigated, among others, the effect of different tractor tyre designs as well as the performance of the use of a novel trailer designed to reduce the risk of soil compaction during heavy traffic.

There are major differences in status and organization of science-based policy advice among the European member states. However, the challenges are often the same, and cooperation among providers of science-based policy advice could increase quality. That was one of the take home messages from the first European seminar on science-based policy advice in the field of agriculture and environment.