Lmst

#StripCropping

Last week, we finished marking and georeferencing the plots for the measurements with the Litéral device in our practice-scale barley / soybean strip cropping experiment at Strickhof in Uitikon (ZH, CH). The barley / soybean strip cropping experiment constitutes the practice-scale counterpart to the small plot barley / soybean border effect experiment on our research station in Eschikon (ZH, CH) 🌾 🌱 🔬

#plantscience #agriculturalscience #stripcropping #intercropping #fieldexperiment

The corners of the rectangular Litéral plots that are distributed in a grid throughout the experimental field were marked with short orange plastic sticks and georeferenced using a GPS device.

The soybean plants in the first few rows at the southern strip borders next to winter barley are visibly smaller than the soybean plants more in the interior of the soybean strips.

About two months ago, we sowed the soybean in our barley / soybean border effect experiment. Sowing the soybean in between the standing barley was quite tricky, but in the meantime, the soybean plants have emerged, and we are busy collecting data about the interaction between the two crop species. 🌱 🌾

#plantscience #agriculturalscience #stripcropping #intercropping #fieldexperiment

Before sowing the soybean, the soil was tilled with a 52 year-old walk-behind rotary cultivator powered by a two-stroke petrol engine.

Most of the soybean was then sown using our self-propelled plot sowing machine.

With the plot sowing machine, we always sowed three rows of soybean at a time.

Last, the parts of the soybean plots that could not be sown with the self-propelled plot sowing machine were sown with a small mechanical sowing machine pushed by a person that can sow only one row at a time.

Hello, my name is Benedikt Haug, and I am a researcher at the #PlantBreeding group of #WageningenUniversity. I will post here regularly on my work in breeding for biodiverse and resilient cropping systems, such as mixed cropping, strip cropping, agroforestry and agrivoltaics.

My main interests are in the role of the #PlantGenotype and its #Holobiont in...

#PlantBreeding #Agronomy #Agroecology #CropDiversification #Genetics #PlantPlantInteraction #PlantSoilInteraction #PlantMicrobiomeInteraction #NicheComplementarity #PlantCompetition #Facilitation #PlantCommunityEcology #RegenerativeAgriculture #OrganicAgriculture #MixedCropping #Intercropping #StripCropping #Agroforestry #Agrivoltaics