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In the public debate, plant protection is often reduced to the use of synthetic chemical pesticides and their possible consequences, especially for the environment. In fact, the protection of our cultivated plants is almost inherent in the system, because many of the cultivated plants have been deprived of their own defence mechanisms in the course of their cultivation in order to make them digestible for us or even edible in the first place. The instruments of sustainable plant protection consist of a multitude of options for action which, due to the progressive loss of important active substances in the future and the demands of society, are increasingly needed in their interplay to protect plants from pests, competition and diseases. In addition to low-risk or selective crop protection products and breeding efforts, technical innovations in equipment technology, forecasting, and farm and machinery management are particularly important for comprehensive crop protection. In addition to the conservation of natural resources, the focus must be on the production of safe, regional and high-quality food as well as the economic livelihood of the predominantly family-owned farms. Existing conflicting goals must be resolved in an open and consensus-oriented dialog in order to achieve social acceptance for the protection of our crops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 18th and 19th century crossing experiments using maize, ornamentals and peas were carried out in Europe and in the USA. Mendel knew at least a part of the literature when he published his famous paper "Experiments on Plant Hybridisation" with the original German title "Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden" in 1866. In contrast to his predecessors, Mendel recognised the constant segregation ratios appearing in the progenies of the crossings. After being unnoticed for decades, his fundamental theory of heredity was rediscovered and experimentally verified by de Vries, Correns and Tschermak in 1900. Shortly after the English translation of Mendel's work became available in 1901, Raphael Weldon, one of the founders of biometry, published his doubts on Mendel's data since all observed segregation ratios were extremely close to the expected ones. Ronald A. Fisher concluded in a paper from 1936 that a large part of Mendel's results must have been falsified to agree closely with the postulated segregation ratios. The Mendel-Fisher controversy was born. In 1966, 100 years after Mendel's original paper was released, Stern & Sherwood published a book comprising translations of Mendel's laws of inheritance, the rediscovery by de Vries and Correns and Fisher's paper. Subsequently, this led to the publication of numerous articles from different scientific disciplines on the Mendel-Fisher controversy. It may never be revealed, if it was simple luck, if Mendel sorted out plants, which did not represent the theory, or if he had an assistant "who knew too well what was expected", as Fisher speculated in 1936. Nonetheless, Mendel's work doubtlessly culminated in one of the most important breakthrough discoveries of the 19th century and is the starting point of modern genetics and plant breeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heterogeneity of urban agriculture is a major challenge for the implementation of target specific support schemes. Hence, the objective of this paper is, to provide an overview of existing funding schemes and to identify important legal framework conditions for the development of urban agriculture. For this purpose, an explorative approach was chosen with a qualitative survey of horticultural desk officers of the federal states and the federal government in Germany. The results show that neither special legal frameworks nor specific support schemes for urban agriculture exist in many federal states. Furthermore, many federal states do not have specific contact persons for this topic. General agricultural funding as well as ELER and, as a part of it, LEADER funding, among others, were mentioned as funding options. In addition, (potential) problems of urban agriculture, such as low efficiency or land shortage and competition, were mentioned. Based on the results it can be concluded that the issue of urban agriculture has become increasingly important at the political level, but is still of little relevance at the level of agricultural administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The yield performance of 14 hazelnut cultivars of different origin was compared from the second to the twelfth year after planting. The trees were trained as spindles with a planting distance of 4.5 m x 2.5 m, leading to a tree density of 800 trees per hectare. Yields >1 kg tree-1 were achieved from the fourth year after planting, and >3 kg tree-1 from the sixth year after planting. Substantial yield fluctuations between cultivars and years were observed. After reaching maturity a mean yield of 2.2 t ha-1 was achieved in the whole experimental plot, whereas the highest yielding cultivars, 'Barcelona, 'Webbs Price Cob' and 'Emoa 1' achieved average yields of 3.2 t ha-1, 2.9 t ha-1, and 2.6 t-1, respectively. The cultivars differed significantly in fruit mass and kernel mass. The varieties 'Merveille de Bollwiller' (4.0 g) and 'Corabel' (3.8 g) had the highest fruit mass. The small-fruited cultivars 'Pauetet' and 'purple-leaved filbert' had the highest mass proportion of kernel to fruit of 52% and 49%, respectively. This relation was 42% when taking into consideration the average of all cultivars and years. The mean proportion of empty nuts was 2.6% in the whole experiment, but individual cultivars reached up to 16% empty nuts in some years. 'Corabel' and 'Barcelona' had <1% empty nuts. In the 4th, 6th and 11th year after planting, averages numbers of 16, 9, or 16 root suckers per tree were counted. The time required for winter pruning in the 6th and 7th year after planting was 22 h ha-1 and 62 h ha-1, respectively. The experimental data shown in this paper demonstrate that it is possible to grow hazelnuts in a spindle system in the Central German region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern decision support and assistance systems use distributed data sources from private and public providers through specialised web services in order to enhance the provision of information. POHL et al. (2021) present a web service-dominated procedure for the generation of site-specific pesticide application maps by bringing together all required data via web services and other interfaces in the application map service. This paper presents the central services that make it possible to provide site-specific ecological and economic key data and basic information in crop protection. We show how this web service contributes to an automated determination of distance requirements in real time, and discuss the limits of this approach and system. In accordance with the Amendment of the E-Government Act (EGovG) and the introduction of the Act for the Use of Public Sector Data (DNG), the technical documentation of all the REST-compliant programming interfaces have been implemented in accordance with the OpenAPI standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The preservation of fruit genetic resources is the basis for ensuring a sustainable fruit production. All activities of long-term preservation, utilization, research and development of fruit genetic resources are based on the German National Program for Genetic Resources of Agricultural and Horticultural Plants. The Fruit Gene Bank at the Julius Kühn-Institute (JKI), Institute for Breeding Research on Fruit Crops has been established as a partner for science and practice at the national and international level since its integration into JKI at January 1st, 2003. In addition to the cultivar collections for all fruit species native to Central Europe, it also has comprehensive wild species collections, which are the largest public collections of their type in Europe for the genera Malus and Fragaria. The conservation strategies in the fruit gene bank, especially under the special aspect of wild species, will be summarized in this paper and the combination of different conservation methods will be highlighted as a potential to secure the genetic resources of fruits sustainably and effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In long-term field trials at the Dahnsdorf (Fläming) site, investigations have been carried out since 1995 to estimate the necessary level of insecticide application in winter oil seed rape (WOSR) and to develop sustainable insecticide strategies. Within the scope of the trial "Comparison of strategies - environmentally sound crop protection", two different insecticide strategies were compared in WOSR in three trial phases, each of which differed in intensity. The aim of this paper was to compare and discuss these insecticide intensities and their yield and environmental effects against the background of the annual infestation pressure. The evaluation showed that in 21 of 22 trial years considered, insecticide measures were necessary in WOSR, the intensity of which fluctuated considerably due to weather conditions and infestation pressure. It could be shown that a reduction of treatment intensity by 50% to 60% did result in significant yield losses only during the first trial phase. The comparison of the environmental impacts, calculated with the risk indicator model SYNOPS-GIS, showed that the reduction in treatment intensity was accompanied by a reduction in environmental risk over many years. However, individual cases showed that this was not always true and that the choice of agent or active ingredient was also of decisive importance. The results underline the importance of using available decision support tools in crop protection such as infestation controls, warning service, forecasting models and success monitoring to reduce the use of insecticides in WOSR to the necessary need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to develop concepts for integrated plant protection, a field trial of the Julius Kühn-Institute was set up in Dahnsdorf (Brandenburg) in 1995 and various long-term field trials were carried out. Within the framework of the largest and oldest on-site long-term field trial "Comparison of Strategies for Environmentally Friendly Plant Protection", this paper examines the effects of a 50% reduction strategy in phase 1 (1997 to 2007) and a consistent implementation of integrated plant protection (IPS) in phase 2 (2008 to 2013) and modified in phase 3 (2014 to 2019) compared to a practical strategy (GfP), with regard to situation-specific plant protection against fungal pathogens in winter wheat. While in the first two phases of the trial (1997 to 2013) identical varieties were grown in the strategies, in phase 3 an extension was made to include the variety component. The most frequently occurring diseases were leaf blotch (Zymoseptoria tritici, Septoria nodorum), leaf rust (Puccinia triticina) and yellow rust (Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici), which occurred with very different intensity over the years depending on weather and disease pressure. The fungicide treatment frequency index, as a measure of the intensity of plant protection, showed a value of 0.8 (situation-related plant protection product application (100%) and 0.4 (50% of situation-related application) in phase 1 on average over the years. This was a significant difference between the strategies to be tested, which was due to the strict reduction of plant protection product applications by 50%. The change of the trial in phase 2 and 3 resulted in a fungicide treatment frequency index of 1.2 and 1.1 in the IPS strategy and 1.7 and 1.9 in the GfP strategy, which proved to be not significantly different. When comparing the yields, there was a significant difference between the strategies in only two (2001, 2006) of the 23 years. Also in comparison with the untreated controls, a significant difference was evident in only four years in the GfP strategy, and in only one year in the IPS strategy. Fungicide applications would often not have been necessary retrospectively. In line with the yields and fungicide treatment frequency indices, the net profit averaged over the six years of phase 3 was also not significantly different. Thus, the differentiation of the GfP and IPS strategies was not sufficient to show a clear difference between them so far, which is ultimately due to the already low fungicide treatment frequency indices in the GfP strategy, which were below those of regional practice in all phases, and to the effective resistances of the selected varieties. Despite the frequent exceeding of the control thresholds and the resulting fungicide applications, the disease progress was often moderate to low. Clear yield differences are only evident in years with high disease pressure and favourable weather conditions for infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to conventional farming knowledge from basal nutrient experiments, statistical relations were found between topsoil plant-available nutrient concentrations and crop yield differences received from additional fertilization which are especially well-suited to establishing fertilization measurement procedures, when as many trial results and sites as possible in the data analysis where included. However, the findings obtained are dependent on the yield level of the cropping system. Therefore, in this paper all available field trials conducted under organic farming conditions were collected with regard to mineral phosphorus (P, soft rock phosphate, Thomas phosphate) and potassium (K, natural potash salts, potassium sulfate) fertilizer application. Within the time period 1993-2016 regression and boxplot graphical and tabular analyses could be used to analyze multi-year trial results comprising 21 sites and 243 P variants and 30 sites and 201 K variants from a total of 9 federal German states. The relations between the available P and K nutrients (extraction with diluted lactate solutions, CAL, DL) and the relative crop yield differences between standard and fertilizer variants (0-100 kg P/ha/a, 0-664 kg K/ha/a) were described as quantitatively as possible. Subject to increasing soil content of P (0.8-12.3 mg P/100 g) and K (2.1-29.0 mg K/100 g), the declining yield increase from nutrient deficit up to yield maximum was clearly visible for both nutrient results. The yield effect of P fertilizers was different at high soil pH values. Contrary to the findings of the P increase trials, distinct interactions between soil type as well as the cultivated crop species and the yield effects were found in the range of low K concentration. On plots with insufficient soil K content fertilization led to higher yield effects on heavy soils (L-T) than on light soils (S-sL). In order of precedence, clover and alfalfa grass mixtures, row crops (potato, maize, field vegetables) and especially grain legumes (field bean, pea, lupine) reacted much more sensitively than cereal crops. According to the nutrient-availability classification system of the VDLUFA, aggregation of the crop yield results into groups of differently available soil nutrient content enabled nutrient ranges to be identified in which only marginal or no mean yield effects were achieved with additional fertilizer application. These optimal nutrient values of 2.5-4.5 mg P/100 g and 6.6-10.0 mg K/100 g soil are located on a markedly lower level compared to estimated values of conventional cultivation systems. Subject to the high range of the individual results within very low soil nutrient contents, mean yield increase of 9% appeared after P and of 12% after K fertilization. These experimentally established groups for classifying soil nutrient content can be used to further development work on fertilizer requirement methods in organic farming systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the end of 2019, the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) presented a discussion paper on the Arable Farming Strategy. The Julius Kühn-Institut (JKI) was intensively involved in the preparatory work and supported the BMEL in developing the arable farming strategy. It describes six guidelines that define the framework for sustainable arable farming. In a total of 12 fields of action, challenges and conflicting objectives are named and corresponding objectives and measures are identified. Some of the contents of the arable farming strategy are presented below. It is also shown how departmental research - and the JKI in particular - is already actively supporting the implementation of the arable farming strategy today as well as in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]