When Christian came to me and asked me if I would like to conduct a field experiment for the Diversify project, I was very enthusiastic about it. I had already worked in the field, but I hadn’t ever organised and carried out a whole experiment on my own. This is the story of how it […]
There are many reasons to visit Copenhagen, amongst them the sculpture of The Little Mermaid and the beautiful red brick buildings. However, none of these were my reasons… I was on a mission to separate roots of mixed crop species, i.e. two or more crops grown in the same area at the same time. I […]
A photo gallery and introduction to insect monitoring methods from Münster intercropping trials 2017-2019… When listing plant traits, the first that come to mind are morphological or production related. However, ‘indirect’ traits such as crop ecological interactions are also key aspects to be aware of when assessing plant teams. With this in mind, diversity of […]
Here in Denmark, we had the pleasure of having 3 participatory farmers hosting trails with plant teams of cereal legumes, and despite a very extreme drought, the trails did well. Partly, we were lucky with the fields chosen for trails, as two of them could be irrigated and one was on very fertile clay soil […]
Why this workshop, why now? Our work on cultivar selection for intercropping has highlighted a need for more knowledge about crop genotypes suited for cultivation in mixed cropping. Cultivars selected for sole cropping might not perform well in crop mixtures as the traits required for sole versus mixed cropping can differ. Breeding for mixtures, however, […]
This summer the consortium met in Copenhagen thanks to the organisational support of two of our project partners, L&F SEGES and the University of Copenhagen. As well as the workshops and training on communicating science in user-generated video (see our previous blog post), it was a great opportunity to catch up on activity across the […]
At the Copenhagen Conference 2019 DIVERSify partners engaged in workshops and training to enable them to produce entry level web video. Below are the results of the user generated video competition… #1 Voted Winner: Reducing pests and diseases #2 The Runners up… The benefits of inter-cropping with cereals Where are the pollinators? A touch […]
DIVERSify is working with a group of Horizon 2020 research and innovation projects funded by the European Union to diversify agricultural systems and promote the uptake of crop diversification strategies. The five other projects in the ‘Crop Diversification Cluster’ include our sister project ReMIX, the LegValue and TRUE projects, which promote legume-based agri-feed and -food […]
Throwback to my blog on the LEAF website… DIVERSify isn’t just looking into how plant teams can be used and how to optimise the performance of them it is also helping to upskill young researchers through its Young Researcher Mission Programme and online Speak Out Toolkit. Young Researcher on a Mission Last summer, […]
In 2018 the Consorzio Marche Biologiche (Consortium of organic farmers of the Marche Region – ConMarcheBio) participated to the DIVERSify project and a field trial was carried out at the organic farm “Romiti Giovanni”. ConMarcheBio is mainly involved in the production of organic pasta and it has its own storage, milling and processing facilities. However, […]