Eike Luedeling

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• Prof., Dr. agr., MSc, MSc
• Professor at University of Bonn

Agroforestry has been promoted in northwestern Vietnam as a sustainable land management practice that offers multiple benefits, including livelihood enhancement, income diversification, adaptation to climate variability and reduced soil erosion on steep slopes. However, research on the multi-stage adoption process of agroforestry and the complex we...

CONTEXT: Fruit yield and quality are critical determinants of the economic performance of apple orchards. However, these economic metrics are highly uncertain due to various quality-reducing factors during the growing season, and fruit growers would greatly benefit from reliable predictions. OBJECTIVE: In this study, we aim at developing a new tool...

Climatic factors strongly influence the phenology of olive trees. The timing of flowering, in particular, responds strongly to climatic drivers, most notably to variation in temperature. To gain insights into prospective impacts of climate change, which is projected to generate decreases in winter chill as well as increases in spring heat, we asses...

Der Nachruf beschreibt die40jährige berufliche Taetigkeit und Werdegang von John Bukovac, Michigan State University(MSU) und die Zusammenarbeit mit dem Institut fuer Obstbau und Gemüsebau bzw. heute HortiBonn unter .. https://www.gartenbauwissenschaft.uni-bonn.de/post/25_01_16_john_bukovac/

CONTEXT: Late spring frosts are a major problem for apple production in Germany. Frost events frequently lead to yield losses and quality reduction. This has motivated the development of several frost protection measures, which differ in terms of effectiveness, costs and workload. In many cases, it is an open question for fruit growers if investing...

Temperate fruit trees require exposure to chill and heat conditions to overcome the dormant period in winter and resume growth in spring. Rising temperatures due to climate change have already impacted winter chill accumulation in horticulturally vital growing regions worldwide. Afghanistan’s intra-regional differences make the country favorable fo...

Accurate estimation is a fundamental skill in decision science, essential for effective decision making across various fields, including agriculture, environmental management, and policy development. To address the challenges of making reliable estimates, we developed an innovative online application designed for calibration training that helps stu...

Global temperatures are increasing due to human-driven climate change, with notable implications for the flowering phenology of many forest tree species. Modelling the thermal requirements of these species is critical for projecting the impacts of climate change on forests and for developing appropriate adaptation strategies. Fitting models to phen...

Climate change is expected to impact fruit tree bloom dates, including delayed bloom or bloom failure, especially where warming winters reduce the accumulation of winter chill, which is needed to overcome dormancy. Modeling fruit tree bloom is challenging, as the mechanisms of chill and heat accumulation are not well understood, and progress throug...

Dormancy in temperate fruit trees is a mechanism of temporary growth suspension, which is vital for tree survival during winter. Studies on this phenomenon frequently employ scientific methods that aim to detect the timing of dormancy release. Dormancy release occurs when trees have been exposed to sufficient chill, allowing them to resume growth u...

Temperate fruit trees require exposure to chill and heat conditions to overcome the dormant period in winter and resume growth in spring. Rising temperatures due to climate change have already impacted winter chill accumulation in horticulturally vital growing regions worldwide. Afghanistan’s intra-regional differences make the country favorable fo...

Use of holistic modelling of different agroforestry systems within the ReForest project to promote adoption in Europe Prajna Kasargodu Anebagilu, Cory Whitney, Andrew Marcil, Marcos Jiménez Martínez, Eike Luedeling Agroforestry has the potential to produce diverse food and income sources, provide balanced development of the region and aid in sustai...

The integration of agroforestry on dairy farms presents a potential paradigm shift in dairy production in the Eifel Region of Germany. Through consultation and interviews with local farmers, foresters and other experts we have developed a decision analysis model to describe the shift from current production to agroforestry on dairy farms and assess...

Strong night frosts in spring have the potential to cause severe damage to fruit trees, causing up to €3.3 billion of damage in Europe in 2017. If temperatures drop below − 2.2 °C after the growing season starts, this phenomenon is referred to as a false spring. For the Netherlands, the risk of false spring damage increased during the past 70 years...

Fruit tree–based agroforestry has been promoted as an alternative farming practice in upland Northwest Vietnam to replace monocultures of staple crops. Although many studies have focused on evaluating the performance of agroforestry systems at the plot level, research on how farmers perceive and evaluate agroforestry considering whole-farm contexts...

Temperate fruit and nut crops require distinctive cold and warm seasons to meet their physiological requirements and progress through their phenological stages. Consequently, they have been traditionally cultivated in warm temperate climate regions characterized by dry-summer and wet-winter seasons. However, fruit and nut production in these areas...

Climate services can support multiple Sustainable Development Goals. However, in agricultural contexts, the “last-mile” delivery of agro-climate services (ACS) struggles with numerous barriers that prevent smallholder farmers from receiving crucial information. We sought to assess the processes by which farmers adopt ACS in order to support the sca...

Food environments are the underlying physical, economic, political and sociocultural conditions that determine the availability, affordability, quality and safety of food as well as the information, advertising and promotion around food. The regular consumption of processed food and fast food is causing the rate of overweight and obese children in...

Despite being extremely important for holistic research, gender is often overlooked in agricultural and development-related studies. Rural farm women in low-and middle-income countries are the main subject of rural agriculture development interventions for women's empowerment. We study factors influencing their empowerment in agricultural developme...

Fruit tree-based agroforestry has been promoted as an alternative farming practice in upland Northwest Vietnam, which may replace erosion-prone staple crop monocultures. Although many studies have focused on evaluating the performance of agroforestry systems at the plot level, there has been little research on how farmers perceive and evaluate agro...

The food environments of the Ca Dong people have changed dramatically since they were resettled from ancestral lands for the construction of the Dak Drinh hydropower reservoir in 2013. Food environments have shifted from traditional hunting, wild harvesting, and swidden agriculture, to low-income commodity production, leading to a decline in forest...

Many small scale farmers on the Letaba River in South Africa are dependent on river flows for their livelihoods. There is existing conflict between upstream abstractions, as well as provision for environmental flows, that renders their position insecure. The research demonstrated that sustained environmental flow provision by upstream water managem...

Leaf-out and flowering in any given species have evolved to occur in a predetermined sequence, with the inter-stage time interval optimized to maximize plant fitness. Although warming-induced advances of both leaf-out and flowering are well documented, it remains unclear whether shifts in these phenological phases differ in magnitudes and whether c...

Strong night frosts in spring have the potential to cause severe damage to fruit trees, causing up to €3.3 billion of damage in Europe in 2017. If temperatures drop below -2.2°C after the growing season starts, this phenomenon is referred to as a False Spring . For The Netherlands, the risk of false spring damage increased during the past 70 years,...

Given the extensive impact of humans on ecosystems and the uncertainty faced by decision-makers when choosing among alternatives, formal support is required for decision-making in complex agroecological systems. While approaches for producing reliable impact projections accounting for system complexity and uncertainty do exist, decision-makers rare...

Temperate fruit trees are widely cultivated across the world's temperate regions. These trees are well-adapted to cold-winter climates through their ability to synchronize their phenology with the seasons. In autumn, they enter a dormant state, which allows them to survive the low winter temperatures and lasts until they resume growth in early spri...

Traditional fruit tree cultivars are an important source of agricultural biodiversity. These genotypes are well adapted to the regions where they grow, and their fruits offer distinctive features compared to the commercial cultivars that are frequently grown. We analyzed the adaptation prospects of seven sweet cherry cultivars grown in Zaragoza (Sp...

The present study aims to generalize cultivar-specific tree phenology responses to winter and spring temperatures and assess the effectiveness of the Tabuenca test and various chill and heat accumulation models in predicting bloom dates for a wide range of climatic conditions and years. To this end, we estimated the dates of rest completion and blo...

The wetting behaviour of the spray and the biological efficacy of Cu²⁺ active ingredients in agrochemical formulations may be enhanced by tank‐mix additives. We investigated how three BREAK‐THRU® additives (BT301: biodegradable, BT133 and BT420: bio‐based and biodegradable) tank‐mixed with commercial copper preparations influenced the spray distrib...

Temperate trees require low temperatures during winter and subsequent warm conditions in early spring to flower and eventually bear fruit. Many parts of the Mediterranean region feature winters with low and sometimes marginal chill accumulation. To assess historic and future agroclimatic conditions for cultivating temperate trees (including almonds...

The wetting behaviour of the spray and biological efficacy of Cu2+ active ingredients in agrochemical formulations may be enhanced by tank-mix additives. We investigated how three BREAK-THRU additives (BT301: biodegradable, BT133 and BT420: bio-based and biodegradable) as tank-mix with commercial copper preparations influence the spray distribution...

Many farmers hesitate to adopt new management strategies with actual or perceived risks and uncertainties. Especially in ornamental plant production, farmers often stick to current production strategies to avoid the risk of economically harmful plant losses, even though they may recognize the need to optimize farm management. This work focused on t...

National-scale carbon footprints of livestock production are commonly computed from a set of production system characteristics that serve as inputs for greenhouse gas (GHG) emission models. We evaluated the feasibility of using such equations at a finer scale to derive a simple farm-scale indicator of emission intensity (milk yield per head). Using...

Farmers’ agricultural practices in Vietnam are highly sensitive to weather, climate variability and climate change. The lack of timely and actionable climate-informed agricultural advice leads to significant input and yield losses, which can render investments in farming unprofitable. Development organizations in Vietnam have provided agro-climate...

Intervening into agricultural systems necessarily includes risks, uncertainties, and ultimately unknown outcomes. Decision analysis embraces uncertainty through an interdisciplinary approach that involves relevant stakeholders in evaluating complex decisions. We applied decision analysis approaches to prioritize 21 farm management interventions, wh...

Phenology models are crucial tools for assessing climate change impacts in forestry, ecology and agriculture. Such models are typically calibrated with observational or experimental data and validated with a set of independent observations. While there have been extensive discussions about validation approaches, systematic studies assessing the eff...

CONTEXT Even though diversification of horticultural production systems allows farmers to cope with risks and uncertainties, strategies for raising profitability usually aim to improve the productivity of monocultures rather than pursuing diversification. Horticultural production systems are often highly diversified in terms of land use and planted...

Decision making in pest management is a challenging task. While pest dynamics are often quite uncertain, such decisions are often based on tenuous assumptions of certainty (economic injury levels and marginal utility approximations). To overcome such assumptions and adequately consider uncertainty, we apply decision analysis to evaluate management...

Voluntary standards can help to ensure the quality of projects eligible for carbon offsetting, i.e., selling carbon certificates. However, in deciding on whether to adopt such standards, the managers of carbon offset projects are faced with uncertainty regarding the costs and risks involved. Decision Analysis provides a helpful set of tools that ca...

Ornamental heather (Calluna vulgaris) production is characterized by high risks such as occurrence of fungal diseases and plant losses. Given the general absence of formal research on this economically important production system, farmers depend on their own approaches to assess plant vitality. We provide a reproducible, affordable and transparent...

Winter chill accumulation plays a crucial role in determining the moment of bud burst in temperate fruit and nut trees, and insufficient chill can greatly limit yield potentials. To assess future cultivation options for such species in South America, we estimated winter chill through a spatial analysis. We used historical data (1980–2017) from 158...

Winter chill is expected to decrease in many mild-winter regions under future climatic conditions. Reliable estimates of the chill requirements (CR) of fruit trees are essential for assessing the current suitability of cultivars and potential climate change impacts on fruit production. We determined chill and heat requirements of ten apple cultivar...

Global warming has modified the phenology of deciduous species. Temperature during the dormancy phase modulates the timing of bloom in temperate trees. Chill and heat requirements represent the climatic needs of trees during dormancy. Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression allows delineating chilling and forcing phases, which in turn allows estimat...

Developing and testing farmers' adoption pathways of agro-climate services

Forecasting spring phenology of temperate fruit trees is of high concern for orchard plannersand fruit producers, particularly in the context of climate change. Responding to this need, horticultural researchers have developed models to estimate chill and heat requirements and project dormancy release. Despite some successes in dormancy modeling, s...

Temperate fruit trees can enter dormancy during autumn-winter and resume active phenological development in spring in response to warm conditions. In a global warming context, recent temperature dynamics are causing changes in phenology and flowering that directly affect fruit production and yield. However, understanding how temperature regulates p...

Voluntary standards help to ensure the quality of projects eligible for carbon offsetting, i.e. selling carbon certificates. However, in deciding on whether to adopt such standards the managers of carbon offset projects are faced with uncertainty regarding the costs and risks involved. Decision Analysis provides a helpful set of tools that can supp...

Agroforestry (AF)-based adaptation to global climate change can consist of (1) reversal of negative trends in diverse tree cover as generic portfolio risk management strategy; (2) targeted, strategic, shift in resource capture (e.g. light, water) to adjust to changing conditions (e.g. lower or more variable rainfall, higher temperatures); (3) veget...

In a global warming context, analyses of historic temperature records are essential to understand the potential impacts of climate change on spring phenology. To estimate flowering trends over recent decades, we analyzed long-term temperature and phenology records of eleven local apple cultivars in Asturias (northwestern Spain) in a temperate ocean...

The boll weevil [BW; Anthonomus grandis grandis Boheman (Coleoptera: Curculionidae)] is the main pest in the cotton-producing regions throughout the Americas from Southern Texas to Argentina. In the Colombian Caribbean, frequent population outbreaks have resulted in cotton planting bans in some localities and in massive applications of insecticides...

Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) is carried out with the objective of regaining ecological functions and enhancing human well-being through intervention in degrading ecosystems. However, uncertainties and risks related to FLR make it difficult to predict long-term outcomes and inform investment plans. We applied a Stochastic Impact Evaluation...

Available options for mitigating the impacts of extreme weather events on temperate fruit trees involve a number of risks and uncertainties, leaving growers hesitant about the benefits of implementing new technologies to protect their orchards. We used Decision Analysis approaches, which account for these risks and uncertainties, to assess investme...

Crop models can support agricultural decisions, yet their reliability is necessarily limited when they do not sufficiently represent the complexity and specific circumstances of the target system. In some cases, models have such prohibitively high data requirements that they are only applicable with far-reaching and often questionable assumptions....

While the principles of sustainable development are widely accepted, considering these principles effectively during implementation planning and performance measurement remains a challenge. We argue that predominantly-used results-based approaches, which monitor performance against pre-defined targets and indicators, are ill-suited to performance m...

The aim of this study is to identify how Africa may transform its potentials into realities and actually secure its supply of food for affordable and healthy diets from the sustainable use of resources. Africa’s food imports amount to about US$ 60 billion per year. In net terms, cereals account for about US$ 25 billion per year, meat and dairy for...

Agroforestry systems dot agricultural landscapes in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where they provide food, fuelwood, fibre, fodder and other products that are used at home or sold for income. Agroforestry also provides ecosystem services that are important and critical for improved livelihoods. By combining trees and/or shrubs with crops and/or livesto...

Many actors in agricultural research, development, and policy arenas require accurate information on the spatial extents of cropping and farming practices. While remote sensing provides ways for obtaining such information, it is often difficult to distinguish between different types of agricultural practices or identify particular farming systems....

Future warming predicted for Tunisia may reduce winter chill and affect the production of tree fruits and nuts, one of the key sectors of the country’s economy. To assess past and future chill availability, we used weather records from 1973 to 2019 to simulate historic and future chill for 20 weather stations (16 from Tunisia, 3 from Algeria and 1...

For centuries, traditional high-altitude oases in Oman have depended on the cultivation of deciduous fruit trees. This study explores the effects of climate change on winter chill (estimated as Chilling Hours-CH and Chill Portions-CP), a prerequisite to overcoming dormancy and initiating flowering, in three Omani oases. The results are compared wit...

Subtropical areas such as the major fruit production zone of Chile are among the most vulnerable environments to climate change. Increasing frequencies of unusual weather events, e.g. excessive rainfall or hail and frost episodes, during the growing season can cause severe fruit losses. This can threaten the viability of farm. and have implications...

Farmers' agricultural practices in Vietnam are highly sensitive to variable weather and vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The lack of timely and actionable weather forecasts and agricultural advisories can lead to significant yield loss and unprofitable investments in agricultural inputs, which can have severe consequences for resource-c...

Winter chill, which temperate trees require in order to overcome dormancy, is expected to decrease substantially in the future in most deciduous fruit tree growing areas. Several mathematical models have been developed in different regions to quantify chill requirements of tree species and cultivars. The Dynamic model has emerged as the most plausi...

Tunisia is among the most vulnerable countries to climate change in the future with increasing temperatures and frequencies drought years. In Tunisia, fruit growing is one of the key sectors of the national economy. It occupies 2 million hectares, contributes about 30% to total agricultural production and 60% to agricultural exports. Fruits rich in...

Agroforestry interventions have the potential to benefit the livelihoods of farmers and communities worldwide. However, given the high system complexity, the long-term benefits of agroforestry are difficult to anticipate. This study aimed to integrate uncertainty into long-term performance projections for agroforestry interventions in the highlands...

Agricultural management decisions are usually made without perfect knowledge. Decision Analysis (DA) approaches translate available uncertain information on costs, benefits and risks involved in decisions into actionable management recommendations. We illustrate the use of DA procedures to inform decisions on disease management strategies in orname...