Hartmut Stützel

• Dr. sc. agr.
• Professor (Full) at Leibniz Universität Hannover

Multi-environmental trials (MET) with temporal and spatial variance are crucial for understanding genotype-environment-management (GxExM) interactions in crops. Here, we present a MET dataset for winter wheat in Germany. The dataset encompasses MET spanning six years (2015–2020), six locations and nine crop management scenarios (consisting of combi...

Crop varieties differing in architectural characteristics (AC) vary in their intra-canopy light distribution. To optimize canopy photosynthesis, we hypothesize that varieties with contrasting AC possess different photosynthetic acclimation strategy (PAS) with respect to photosynthetic nitrogen (Np) partitioning. We firstly used in silico experiment...

The external quality of cauliflower is largely dependent on the size of its leaves, which affects the head size through photosynthesis, as well as the white coloring of the head through shading. Insufficient nitrogen supply negatively impacts leaf expansion and thereby leaf size. Therefore, recommended nitrogen fertilization target values in practi...

Subsurface Drip Fertigation (SDF) is a technology with the potential to provide nutrients and water to the plant root zone at the rates required by the plant. Under SDF, roots are exposed to spatially and temporally variable water and nutrient profiles, which affects their uptake dynamics and growth. The functioning of the aboveground parts of plan...

In Germany, the agricultural sector is responsible for more than 60% of the total emissions of reactive nitrogen (BMU, 2017); mainly due to the asynchrony between nitrate availability and crop demand (Noyce et al., 2019). The need for agricultural practices, which can achieve high yields with low environmental impacts, is urgent. Subsurface drip fe...

A study was conducted to determine the effects of nitrogen levels during the vegetative and curd formation phases of cauliflower growth on curd quality.

In cereal crops, environmental fluctuations affect different physiological processes during various developmental phases associated with the formation of yield components. Because these effects are coupled with cultivar-specific phenology, studies investigating environmental responses in different cultivars can give contradictory results regarding...

There is an increasing interest in alternatives to peat in growing media due to environmental constraints. However, plants grown in peat substitutes often show impaired growth compared to plants grown in peat-based media. Hence, it would be interesting to know whether these deficiencies can be compensated by supplementing other growth factors, e.g....

Scientific facts about the relationships between the goals are indispensable for the rational social discourse on solving the various conflicting goals on the way to sustainable crop production. Therefore, the German Society for Agronomy has compiled scientific findings on the topics of biodiversity, climate relevance and climate resilience, nutrie...

Faba bean (Vicia faba L.) is one of the most important legume crops worldwide. High salinity is a major constraint for faba bean productivity in many countries, including Egypt. Here, we examined the effects of salinity-induced toxicity on the growth of two local faba bean genotypes by analyzing physiological and biochemical responses to identify t...

Cassava yields of 6 t ha−1 are lower than the potential yield of 20–25 t ha−1 obtained in Northern Zambia. It is grown in legume intercropping with little or no fertilizer, causing nutrient depletion with consequent land abandonment. Therefore, the study objective was to investigate the performance of cassava under lime, fertilizer, and grain legum...

Different factors such as the genotype, environmental conditions, temperature stress, solar radiation and others can influence the phytochemical status of plants. The concentration of phenolic acids and alkylresorciols (ARs) as well as their chemical composition and biological activity have been determined in twelve winter wheat cultivars grown at...

Photosynthetic light response curve parameters help us understand the interspecific variation in photosynthetic traits, leaf acclimation status, carbon uptake, and plant productivity in specific environments. These parameters are also influenced by leaf traits which rely on species and growth environment. In accessions of four amaranth species (Ama...

Detection of morphological stress symptoms through 3D examination of plants might be a cost-efficient way to avoid yield losses and ensure product quality in agricultural and horticultural production. Although the 3D reconstruction of plants was intensively performed, the relationships between morphological and physiological plant responses to sali...

One-dimensional light models using the Beer-Lambert equation (BL) with the light extinction coefficient k are simple and robust tools for estimating light interception of homogeneous canopies. Functional-structural plant models (FSPMs) are powerful to capture light-plant interactions in heterogeneous canopies, but they are also more complex due to...

Root growth and distribution of Cabbage (Brassica oleracea) under Subsurface drip fertigation (SDF). The water and fertilizer is delivered directly to the root zone.

Reversing the decline of biodiver-sity in European agricultural land-scapes is urgent. We suggest eightmeasures addressing politics, eco-nomics, and civil society to instigatetransformative changes in agricul-tural landscapes. We emphasizethe need for a well-informed societyand political measures promotingsustainable farming by combiningfood produc...

The objective of this study was to evaluate the performances of three cassava genotypes on yield, physiology and morphological traits under different fertilization regimes. A field experiment was conducted in a split-plot design for two consecutive seasons in the Mansa district of the Luapula Province of Northern Zambia in the highly weathered Chro...

Cassava is a staple food and a major source of income for many smallholder farmers. However, its yields are less than 6 t ha−1 compared to a potential yield of 20–25 t ha−1 in Zambia. Understanding cropping practices and constraints in cassava production systems is imperative for sustainable intensification. Therefore, a survey of 40 households eac...

For decisions on supplemental lighting a quantitative knowledge of the plants' responses to light under varying conditions is fundamental. In this study, we developed light dose-response curves of growth and morphological traits for Ocimum basilicum L. and examined the effects of light color (blue, red, and white plus far-red) and natural environme...

Pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins are known to play relevant roles in plant defense against biotic and abiotic stresses. In the present study, we characterize the response of transgenic faba bean (Vicia faba L.) plants encoding a PR10a gene from potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) to salinity and drought. The transgene was under the mannopine synthetase...

Citation: Desouky, A.F.; Ahmed, A.H.H.; Stützel, H.; Jacobsen, H.-J.; Pao, Y.-C.; Hanafy, M.S. Enhanced Abiotic Stress Tolerance of Vicia faba L. Plants Heterologously Expressing the PR10a Gene from Potato. Plants 2021, 10, 173. https://doi.

Water deficit is one of the major limitations to food production worldwide and most climate change scenarios predict an aggravation of the situation. To face the expected increase in drought stress in the coming years, breeders are working to elucidate the genetic control of barley growth and productivity traits under water deficit. Barley is known...

Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.), an important vegetable crop, is sensitive to NaCl. Its salinity tolerance can be improved by grafting onto pumpkin rootstocks, which restricts the uptake of Na+, but not of Cl−. Although Na+ seems to be more toxic than Cl− in cucumber, tissue tolerance to Na+ and Cl− is still unclear. In this study, a mixed-salt exper...

This book on the physiology of vegetable crops focuses on the activities and functions of vegetables, defined as herbaceous plants that are harvested for edible parts that can be consumed fresh or with little preparation. Physiology deals with the growth and development processes of these plants, and while this book is focused primarily on the orga...

This book on the physiology of vegetable crops focuses on the activities and functions of vegetables, defined as herbaceous plants that are harvested for edible parts that can be consumed fresh or with little preparation. Physiology deals with the growth and development processes of these plants, and while this book is focused primarily on the orga...

This book on the physiology of vegetable crops focuses on the activities and functions of vegetables, defined as herbaceous plants that are harvested for edible parts that can be consumed fresh or with little preparation. Physiology deals with the growth and development processes of these plants, and while this book is focused primarily on the orga...

Background: Field-grown leafy vegetables can be damaged by biotic and abiotic factors, or mechanically damaged by farming practices. Available methods to evaluate leaf tissue damage mainly rely on colour differentiation between healthy and damaged tissues. Alternatively, sophisticated equipment such as microscopy and hyperspectral cameras can be e...

Acclimation of leaf traits to fluctuating environments is a key mechanism to maximize fitness. One of the most important strategies in acclimation to changing light is to maintain efficient utilization of nitrogen in the photosynthetic apparatus by continuous modifications of between-leaf distribution along the canopy depth and within-leaf partitio...

Yield development of agricultural crops over time is not merely the result of genetic and agronomic factors, but also the outcome of a complex interaction between climatic and site‐specific soil conditions. However, the influence of past climatic changes on yield trends remains unclear, particularly under consideration of different soil conditions....

Optimizing the interplay between sinks and sources is of crucial importance for breeding progress in winter wheat. However, the physiological limitations of yield from source (e.g. green canopy duration, GCD) and sink (e.g. grain number) are still unclear. Furthermore, there is little information on how the source traits have been modified during t...

Legume crops have been the primary targets for improvement by genetic transformation due to their importance for human and animal consumption worldwide. Many of these important legume crops were difficult to genetically engineer especially faba bean crop, mainly due to high phenolics content and their recalcitrance to in vitro regeneration. Therefo...

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The world cropping area for wheat exceeds that of any other crop, and high grain yields in intensive wheat cropping systems are essential for global food security. Breeding has raised yields dramatically in high-input production systems; however, selection under optimal growth conditions is widely believed to diminish the adaptive capacity of culti...

Although the organic production concept is characterised by an efficient and environmentally sound production that is based on a few off-farm inputs as well as recycling organically grown products. Organic products are often perceived as safer and more promotive to consumers’ health as compared to products from conventional or integrated production...

Leaves adapted to diurnal light fluctuation (FL) tend to have reduced photosynthetic parameters in comparison with those grown under constant light but intercepting the same daily photon integral (DPI). This reduction may result from a non-linear relationship between photosynthetic protein synthesis rate (PPSR) and incident photosynthetically activ...

Understanding the adaptation mechanisms of sorghum to drought and the underlying genetic architecture may help to improve its production in a wide range of environments. By crossing a high yielding parent (HYP) and a drought tolerant parent (DTP), we obtained 140 recombinant inbred lines (RILs), which were genotyped with 120 DArT and SSR markers co...

Phenotypic data used for QTL mapping. Trait appreviations are as following; Leaf area (LA), total root lengths (TRL), leaves dry weight (LDW), stems dry weight (SDW), roots dry weight (RDW), above ground dry matter (AGDM) was calculated as the sum of LDW and SDW, Specific leaf area (SLA) was calculated as ratio between LA and LDW, heading date (HD)...

Marker positions on linkage groups. Positions in cM of the 120 DArT and SSR markers grouped in 14 linkage groups. (TXT)

Plants acclimatize their photosynthetic functions in leaves constantly to the fluctuating light, thereby optimizing the use of photosynthetic nitrogen (Nph) at the canopy level. To investigate the complex interplay between external signals during the acclimation processes, a mechanistic model based on the concept of protein turnover (synthesis and...

Drought responses in plants exhibit through architectural and functional traits. Dynamics of architectural traits have feed back influences on light interception, carbon assimilation and dry matter production. Dynamics of key architectural traits such as leaf elevation angle, leaf curvature and azimuth angles and photosynthesis parameters such as V...

Background and Aims Most crop species are glycophytes, and salinity stress is one of the most severe abiotic stresses reducing crop yields worldwide. Salinity affects plant architecture and physiological functions by different mechanisms, which vary largely between crop species and determine the susceptibility or tolerance of a crop species to sali...

Plants of the order Brassicales produce glucosinolates (GS), a group of secondary metabolites that are part of an elaborate defense system. But it is not the GS itself rather its enzymatic hydrolysis products that cause the bioactive effects protecting the plants against pests and pathogens. Thus the enzymatic hydrolysis and a variety of additional...

The challenges of limited water resources (Postel, 2001), nutrient losses to the environment and declining soil fertility (Lal, 2009) have necessitated the search for efficient ways of managing these resources in order to achieve high water and nutrient use efficiencies which may, in turn, reduce excessive losses and improve the yield of crops (Al-...

Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Pflanzenbauwissenschaften Band 29 Anforderungen an den Pflanzenbau in einer sich urbanisierenden Welt 60. Tagung der Gesellschaft für Pflanzenbauwissenschaften e. V. Beiträge in ausschließlicher wissenschaftlicher Verantwortung der jeweiligen Autoren

The influence of organic nitrogen sources on the establishment of E. coli O157:H7 and the occurrence of other potentially human pathogenic bacteria on baby leaf salads was evaluated. Greenhouse-grown rocket and Swiss chard were spray-inoculated with gfp-tagged E. coli O157:H7 twice a week from when their first true leaves reached a length of 2 cm u...

Significance and impact of the study: Contamination of leafy vegetables with Escherichia coli O157:H7 is a growing problem, as reported outbreaks are increasing. However, establishment of this human pathogen in the phyllosphere is not completely understood. Using laser scanning confocal microscopy, we demonstrated that E. coli O157:H7gfp+ can inva...

Gas exchange ( GE ) and chlorophyll fluorescence ( CF ) measurements are widely used to noninvasively study photosynthetic parameters, for example the rates of maximum Rubisco carboxylation ( V cmax ), electron transport rate ( J ), daytime respiration ( R d ) and mesophyll conductance ( g m ). Existing methods for fitting GE data (net assimilation...

Legumes represent an important N source in organic vegetable rotations. Since the amount of N2 fixed as well as N mineralisation from legume biomass are highly variable, N availability does often not match the requirements of following crops. The production of grain legume seeds followed by their temporary storage and application as N fertilizer ma...

There is increasing awareness that crop productivity is not only a function of the interaction between plants and their environment, but is also determined by the interplay between form and function. The need to better understand and even quantify this complex interaction has led to a new category of models of plant growth and development, often na...

Drought adaptation involves avoidance (e.g stomatal closure, hydraulic conductance), tolerance (e.g osmotic adjustment (OA), changes in tissue elasticity) and efficiency mechanisms. OA is a key drought adaptive mechanism that enables plants to maintain water absorption and cell turgor pressure and thus potentially contribute to sustained photosynth...

Key message: QTL regions on chromosomes C06 and C09 are involved in temperature dependent time to curd induction in cauliflower. Temperature is the main environmental factor influencing curding time of cauliflower (Brassica oleracea var. botrytis). Temperatures above 20-22 °C inhibit development towards curding even in many summer cultivars. To id...

Water use efficiency (WUE) is considered as a determinant of yield under stress and a component of crop drought resistance. Stomatal behavior regulates both transpiration rate and net assimilation and has been suggested to be crucial for improving crop WUE. In this work, a dynamic model was used to examine the impact of dynamic properties of stomat...

We propose the establishment of a European Consortium for Open Field Experimentation (ECOFE) that will allow easy access of European plant and soil scientists to experimental field stations that cover all major climatological regions. Coordination and quality control of data extraction and management systems will greatly impact on our ability to co...

Water use efficiency (WUE) is considered as a determinant of yield under stress and a component of crop drought resistance. Stomatal behavior regulates both transpiration rate and net assimilation and has been suggested to be crucial for improving crop WUE. In this work, a dynamic model was used to examine the impact of dynamic properties of stomat...

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is an important vegetable crop and often cultivated in regions exposed to salinity and high temperatures (HT) which change plant architecture, decrease canopy light interception and disturb physiological functions. However, the long-term effects of salinity and HT combination (S+HT) on plant growth are still unclear...

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is an important vegetable crop and often cultivated in regions exposed to salinity and high temperatures (HT) which change plant architecture, decrease canopy light interception and disturb physiological functions. However, the long-term effects of salinity and HT combination (S+HT) on plant growth are still unclear...

There are conflicting opinions on the relative importance of photosynthetic limitations under salinity. Quantitative limitation analysis of photosynthesis provides insight into the contributions of different photosynthetic limitations, but it has only been applied under saturating light conditions. Using experimental data and modeling approaches, w...

There is increasing interest in evaluating the environmental effects on crop architectural traits and yield improvement. However, crop models describing the dynamic changes in canopy structure with environmental conditions and the complex interactions between canopy structure, light interception, and dry mass production are only gradually emerging....

Background and Aims Maximizing photosynthesis at the canopy level is important for enhancing crop yield, and this requires insights into the limiting factors of photosynthesis. Using greenhouse cucumber (Cucumis sativus) as an example, this study provides a novel approach to quantify different components of photosynthetic limitations at the leaf le...

Background and aims The low N availability in organic cropping systems requires an efficient use of the limited N sources. The study aimed to analyze the N efficiency of organically fertilized white cabbage on a crop and crop rotation basis. Methods Effects of soil-incorporated lupine seedlings and seed meal on the N use efficiency (NUE) and indiv...

Key message: Promising genome regions for improving cold tolerance of sorghum were identified on chromosomes SBI-01, SBI-03, SBI-07, and SBI-10. Chlorophyll fluorescence had no major effect on growth rates at low temperatures. Developing fast growing sorghum seedlings is an important breeding goal for temperate climates since low springtime temper...

The determination of maximum chlorophyll fluorescence yield (F' m) with the commonly used single rectangular flash (RF) approach potentially underestimates F' m and electron transport rate (J). A recent study suggests that the multi-phase flash (MPF) approach can provide more accurate estimations of F' m and J. This indicates that using the RF appr...

With its policy paper the Senate Commission on Agro-ecosystem Research of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) summarizes potential benefits of basic research for the sustainable intensification of crop production. Agro-ecosystems critically contribute to fulfilling the need for increasing food and fiber production, diminishing resource deplet...

Large-scale, long-term field experiments are a core element of site-specific agricultural science. To create basic knowledge of site-adapted and regional agricultural production potentials as well as to develop ecologically sound and innovative plant production systems with high productivity and resilience requires high-capacity research infrastruc...

Winter wheat cultivar recommendation is usually based on the cultivar performance observed in post-registration trials. In Germany, official recommendations are based on state cultivar trials, which are conducted individually by the federal states, usually over a period of three years. In each predefined winter wheat cultivation region a subset of...

The goal of the present study is to identify QTL regions influencing pre-flowering drought tolerance and agronomic performance of sorghum under early season drought stress conditions. The random occurrence of drought after sowing leads to reduced growth rates and delayed flowering and harvest time. A good rooting system and high leaf areas are requ...

There is increasing interest in evaluating the environmental effects on crop architectural traits and yield improvement. However, crop models describing the dynamic changes in canopy structure with environmental conditions and the complex interactions between canopy structure, light interception, and dry mass production are only gradually emerging....

Plant physiologists are searching for the limitations of leaf and canopy photosynthesis in order to find a way to maximize the biomass production and resource use efficiency. Based on the Farquhar, von Caemmerer & Berry model of photosynthesis (FvCB model, Fahrquhar et al., 1980), Grassi and Magnani (2005) developed the quantitative limitation anal...

We identified that in a two meter high greenhouse grown cucumber canopy, photosynthesis is mostly light-limited, and light interception and biochemical capacity are the major factors limiting photosynthesis. The diffusion pathways, stomatal and mesophyll conductance, are minor restrictions.

Highlights: A dynamic cucumber FSPM, describing the effects of salinity on the plant morphology and the pattern of sodium accumulation in leaves, is parameterized and evaluated. This model is a first step in exploring mechanisms which improve plant tolerance and WUE at canopy level under salinity stress.