Reimund P. Rötter

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Reimund P. verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• Professor PhD (Dr. rer. nat.)
• Professor (Full) at University of Göttingen

Continuous long-term simulations of an ensemble of nine crop models covering the 1961–2080 period was employed to assess the expected impacts of climate change on the crop yield and water use for distinct crop rotations (CRs) in Europe. In this study, the likelihood of changes in two differently managed CRs (conventional and alternative) involvi...

Agroforestry has the potential to enhance climate change adaptation. While benefits from agroforestry systems consisting of cash crops and shade trees are usually attributed to the (shade) trees, the trees can also have negative impacts due to resource competition with crops. Our hypothesis is that leaf phenology and height of shade trees determine...

Nutrient and water limitations contribute to yield losses in semi-arid regions. Therefore, crop rotations incorporating nitrogen-fixing legumes and drought-tolerant sorghum varieties offer a strategy to improve the utilization of scarce soil resources. Under semi-arid, field-like conditions, sorghum crop rotations with either cowpea pre-crop or fal...

Context Analysing root traits to identify below ground acquisition mechanisms and relating them to above ground traits, such as leaf phenology, can improve the understanding and design of resource use efficient and drought resilient agroforestry systems. Objectives To determine how fine root traits are associated with different shade tree functiona...

Uncertainties of waterlogging impacts simulations for wheat growth are unknown due to absence of multi-model. In this study, we present the largest multi-model intercomparison to date, examining waterlogging impacts on wheat growth. Our findings indicate that individual crop models can accurately simulate measured wheat grain yields under various w...

This paper describes a daily time-step observed and scenario climate dataset on a European grid with 25 km x 25 km spatial resolution. The dataset was developed for crop modelling applications in the MACSUR project. The dataset covers the period 1980-2010 for observations; this is, for a baseline period of 1981-2010 and the year 1980 for crop model...

This paper describes the data set that was used to test the accuracy of twenty-nine crop models in simulating the effect of changing sowing dates and sowing densities on wheat productivity for a high-yielding environment in New Zealand. The data includes one winter wheat cultivar (Wakanui) grown during six consecutive years, from 2012-2013 to 2017-...

Purpose Small-scale farmers are highly heterogeneous with regard to their types of farming, levels of technology adoption, degree of commercialization and many other factors. Such heterogeneous types, respectively groups of small-scale farming systems require different forms of government interventions. This paper applies a machine learning approac...

Crop model-aided ideotyping can accelerate the breeding of resilient barley cultivars. Yet, the accuracy of process descriptions in the crop models still requires substantial improvement, which is only possible with high-quality (HQ) experimental data. Despite being demanded frequently, such data are still rarely available, especially for Northern...

Lack of nitrogen limits food production in poor countries while excessive nitrogen use in industrial countries has led to transgression of the planetary boundary. However, the potential of spatial redistribution of nitrogen input for food security when returning to the safe boundary has not been quantified in a robust manner. Using an emulator of a...

The organic matter stored in soils is a major carbon pool with fundamental importance for the global atmospheric carbon balance. Its decomposition contributes not only to the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere but also to the release of minerals that serve as nutrients for plants growing in these soils. SOC is an indicator of soil fer...

Aims Limited access to nutrients and water is leading to yield losses in smallholder farming systems in semi-arid regions. Therefore, crop rotations including legumes as well as utilizing drought-tolerant sorghum varieties might be a strategy to improve access to scarce resources. Methods Two early and five late maturing sorghum genotypes were tes...

Ecosystems in southern Africa are threatened by numerous global change forces, with climate change being a major threat to the region. Many climate change impacts and environmental-based mitigation and adaptation options remain poorly researched in this globally important biodiversity hotspot. This book is a collection of chapters covering research...

The sustainability of southern Africa’s natural and managed marine and terrestrial ecosystems is threatened by overuse, mismanagement, population pressures, degradation, and climate change. Counteracting unsustainable development requires a deep understanding of earth system processes and how these are affected by ongoing and anticipated global cha...

This chapter aims at providing an overview of the diversity of agroecological conditions, features of main farming systems, agricultural land use, its dynamics and drivers during the last two decades as well as major threats in ten countries of southern Africa (SA10). Based on this, we attempt to identify the resultant challenges for sustainable la...

In this chapter, we explore how, in the face of increasing climatic risks and resource limitations, improved agro-technologies can support sustainable intensification (SI) in small-scale farming systems in Limpopo province, South Africa. Limpopo exhibits high agro-ecological diversity and, at the same time, is one of the regions with the highest de...

South Africa is the World’s largest producers of macadamia nuts, with about 51,000 ha of land covered by macadamia. This leads to major farming challenges, as the expansion of orchards is associated with the loss of habitat and biodiversity, the excessive use of and resistance to insecticides, and an increased pressure on water resources. More freq...

The sustainability of southern Africa’s natural and managed marine and terrestrial ecosystems is threatened by overuse, mismanagement, population pressures, degradation, and climate change. Counteracting unsustainable development requires a deep understanding of earth system processes and how these are affected by ongoing and anticipated global cha...

To address the rising global food demand in a changing climate, yield gaps (Y G), the difference between potential yields under irrigated (Y P) or rainfed conditions (Y WL) and actual farmers' yields (Y a), must be significantly narrowed whilst raising potential yields. Here, we examined the likely impacts of climate change (including changes in cl...

Sorghum holds the potential for enhancing food security, yet the impact of the interplay of water stress and salinity on its growth and productivity remains unclear. To address this, we studied how drought and salinity affect physiological traits, water use, biomass, and yield in different tropical sorghum varieties, utilizing a functional phenotyp...

Macadamia is a high value tree nut crop experiencing a global rise in demand. South Africa is the worldwide largest producer and macadamia orchards are rapidly expanding in the country. However, yields are highly variable across years and have been declining in recent years. Therefore, to sustainably increase the productivity and resilience of maca...

21 The rapid expansion of macadamia production areas in South Africa is linked to increased 22 irrigation water use. Improving water use efficiency is paramount for sustainable production, 23 yet, knowledge of the specific macadamia water requirements and water use behaviour is 24 limited. To close this gap, we set up field experiments to: (i) dete...

Introduction Breeding barley cultivars adapted to drought requires in-depth knowledge on physiological drought responses. Methods We used a high-throughput functional phenotyping platform to examine the response of four high-yielding European spring barley cultivars to a standardized drought treatment imposed around flowering. Results Cv. Chanell...

Grain production must increase by 60% in the next four decades to keep up with the expected population growth and food demand. A significant part of this increase must come from the improvement of staple crop grain yield potential. Crop growth simulation models combined with field experiments and crop physiology are powerful tools to quantify the i...

Model-based climate change impact assessments involve uncertainties given the many physical, biological and socio-economic processes involved and their complexity. Among other things, uncertainties arise from unknown future development of greenhouse gas emissions and uncertainties in climate change scenarios, input data, model structures and parame...

not yet peer-reviewed

The climate change impact and adaptation simulations from the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) for wheat provide a unique dataset of multi-model ensemble simulations for 60 representative global locations covering all global wheat mega environments. The multi-model ensemble reported here has been thoroughly benchma...

This study quantifies the effect of fertilizer and irrigation management on water use efficiency (WUE), crop growth and crop yield in sub-humid to semi-arid conditions of Limpopo Province, South Africa. An approach of coupling a cropping system model (DSSAT) with an agro-hydrological model (SWAT) was developed and applied to simulate crop yield at...

Timely information on the onset of rain is essential for effectively adapting to climate variability and increasing the resilience of rain-fed systems. However, defining optimal sowing dates based on the onset of rain has been challenging. We compared and analyzed the West African Monsoon onset according to Raman's, modified Sivakumar's, Yamada's,...

Northern agriculture faces a rapidly changing climate with increased weather variability. Yield resilience can be assessed through diversity in responses to critical weather patterns, as demonstrated in several European crops. In this study, we extend the work to demonstrate how the response diversity of barley in Finland has developed over time...

Extreme weather events threaten food security, yet global assessments of impacts caused by crop waterlogging are rare. Here we first develop a paradigm that distils common stress patterns across environments, genotypes and climate horizons. Second, we embed improved process-based understanding into a farming systems model to discern changes in glob...

Barley is one of the most important cereals for animal and human consumption. Barley heading and grain filling are especially vulnerable to heat and drought stress, which are projected to increase in the future. Therefore, site-specific adaptation options, like cultivar choice or shifting sowing dates, will be necessary. Using a global climate mode...

1 2 3 Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self-archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You...

Wheat is the most widely grown food crop, with 761 Mt produced globally in 2020. To meet the expected grain demand by mid-century, wheat breeding strategies must continue to improve upon yield-advancing physiological traits, regardless of climate change impacts. Here, the best performing doubled haploid (DH) crosses with an increased canopy photosy...

Due to global climate change, droughts are likely to become more frequent and more severe in many regions such as in South Africa. In Limpopo, observed high climate variability and projected future climate change will likely increase future maize production risks. This paper evaluates drought patterns in Limpopo at two representative sites. We stud...

Smallholder farming systems in southern Africa are characterized by low-input management and integrated livestock and crop production. Low yields and dry-season feed shortages are common. To meet growing food demands, sustainable intensification (SI) of these systems is an important policy goal. While mixed crop–livestock farming may offer greater...

Extreme weather events threaten food security, yet global ssessments of crop waterlogging are rare. Here, we make three important contributions to the literature. First, we develop a paradigm that distils common stress patterns across environments, genotypes and climate horizons. Second, we embed improved process-based understanding into a contempo...

Supplementary infromation ad Senapati et al 2022 Nature Food

Sustainable intensification (SI) of low input farming systems is promoted as a strategy to improve smallholder farmer food security in southern Africa. Using the Limpopo province South Africa as a case study (four villages across a climate gradient), we combined survey data (140 households) and quantitative agronomic observations to understand clim...

Global food security requires food production to be increased in the coming decades. The closure of any existing genetic yield gap (Yig) by genetic improvement could increase crop yield potential and global production. Here we estimated present global wheat Yig, covering all wheat-growing environments and major producers, by optimizing local wheat...

A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 3 Highlight An ensemble of 29 wheat crop models simulates seasonal wheat growth well under locally recommended sowing conditions, but needs improvements to capture the yield response to early sowing, especially under high sowing density. Abstract Crop multi-model ensembles (MME) have proven to be effective in inc...

Crop multi-model ensembles (MME) have proven to be effective in increasing the accuracy of simulations in modelling experiments. However, the ability of a MME to capture crop response to changes in sowing dates and densities has not yet been investigated. These management interventions are some of the main levers for adapting cropping systems to cl...

supplement to Pfeiffer et al 2022 in Biogeosciences

Effective and efficient nutrient management is central to best-practice agriculture, facilitat- ing sustainable intensification while reducing negative externalities. The application of biochar-based fertilizers (BBF) in tropical agronomy has the potential to improve nutrient management by enhancing nutrient availability and uptake. Here, we perfor...

Smallholder farming systems in southern Africa are characterized by low-input management and integrated livestock and crop production. Low yields and dry-season feed shortages are common. To meet growing food demands, sustainable intensi-fication (SI) of these systems is an important policy goal. While mixed crop-livestock farming may offer greater...

Smallholder farming systems in southern Africa are characterized by low-input management and integrated livestock and crop production. Low yields and dry-season feed shortages are common. To meet growing food demands, sustainable intensification (SI) of these systems is an important policy goal. While mixed crop-livestock farming may offer greater...

Increases in temperature and more erratic rainfall patterns due to climate change threaten the already fragile livelihood of smallholder coffee farmers. Shaded coffee in agroforestry systems appear to be a good alternative to protect coffee from extreme temperatures while providing additional ecosystem services, such as extra food and soil protecti...

Crop rotation, fertilization and residue management affect the water balance and crop production and can lead to different sensitivities to climate change. To assess the impacts of climate change on crop rotations (CRs), the crop model ensemble (APSIM,AQUACROP, CROPSYST, DAISY, DSSAT, HERMES, MONICA) was used. The yields and water balance of two CR...

Articles published in Food Security in 2021 are reviewed, showing a wide range of topics covered. Many articles are directly linked with "food" and associated terms such as "nutritive", "nutrition", "dietary", and "health". Another important group is linked with (food) "production" and a range of connected terms including: "irrigation", "cultivated...

We investigated the perceived effects of salinity on farming practices, income, and challenges for crop production in Blang Nibong village in North Aceh, Indonesia. We surveyed 120 smallholder farmers chosen in consultation with local leaders considering their agricultural activities and salinity susceptibility. Farmers’ perceptions of major crop p...

Sustainable intensification (SI) of agriculture is a promising strategy for boosting the capacity of the agricultural sector to meet the growing demands for food and non-food products and services in a sustainable manner. Assessing and quantifying the options for SI remains a challenge due to its multiple dimensions and potential associated trade-o...

Cereal–legume intercropping is promoted within semi‐arid regions as an adaptation strategy to water scarcity and drought for low‐input systems. Our objectives were firstly to evaluate the crop model APSIM for pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum (L.))—cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp) intercropping—and secondly to investigate the hypothesis that int...

Little is known about optimising the productivity of intercropping through exploiting differences between genotypes. Our study evaluates the performance of three winter wheat cultivars and eight winter faba bean genotypes (experimental inbred lines) sown as replacement row intercrops with sole cropping comparisons. Detailed agronomic, physiological...

climate change and sustainable agriculture

The main aim of the current study was to present the abilities of widely used crop models to simulate four different field crops (winter wheat, spring barley, silage maize and winter oilseed rape). The 13 models were tested under Central European conditions represented by three locations in the Czech Republic, selected using temperature and precipi...

Sustainable intensification (SI) is needed to cope with the challenges agriculture faces with respect to climate change and increasing food demand. Northern cropping systems may benefit from longer and warmer growing seasons, but the sustainability of production will be challenged due to increased production risks. Concentrated efforts are needed t...

Supplement to article: Sustainable intensification of crop production under alternative future changes in climate and technology: The case of the North Savo region

Many open questions and unresolved issues surround the topic of bias correction (BC) in climate change impact studies (CCIS). One question relates to the contribution of downscaling of climate change scenarios on the uncertainties in results obtained using impact models for agriculture. In particular, for large area or regional agricultural impact...

Quantifying how multiple ecosystem services and functions are affected by different drivers of Global Change is challenging. Particularly in African savanna regions, highly integrated land-use activities created a landscape mosaic with flows of multiple resources between land use types. A framework is needed that quantifies the effects of climate c...

Many open questions and unresolved issues surround the topic of bias correction (BC) in climate change impact studies (CCIS). One question relates to the contribution of downscaling of climate change scenarios on the uncertainties in results obtained using impact models for agriculture. In particular, for large area or regional agricultural impact...

This opinion article results from a collective analysis by the Editorial Board of Food Security. It is motivated by the ongoing covid-19 global epidemic, but expands to a broader view on the crises that disrupt food systems and threaten food security, locally to globally. Beyond the public health crisis it is causing, the current global pandemic is...

Coffee is a key export commodity of East Africa, but average smallholders’ yields are low. To guide sustainable yield improvements of smallholders’ coffee systems, we investigated coffee yield components in three different types of coffee cropping systems along an altitude gradient (1100−2100 m.a.s.l.) during two production years (2015 and 2016). W...

Diversification of cropping is perceived as a strategy to simultaneously achieve high productivity and maintain environmental sustainability. In southern Africa, however, due to a lack of medium to long-term field trials, there is missing quantitative information. Utilising the capability of agro-ecosystem models to quantify the interactions of cro...

Improving management practices of cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) cultivation especially under future climate change requires knowledge of yield gaps and their determining factors. In this study, we assessed yield gaps and their determining factors through multiple regression modelling in smallholder cocoa agroforestry systems in Ghana along a climatic...

On the background of increasing welfare and continued population growth, there is an ever-increasing pressure on land and other natural resources in many parts of the world. The situation is, however, particularly severe in the drylands of Sub-Saharan Africa. Southern African landscapes, composed of arable lands, tree orchards and rangelands, provi...

Robust projections of climate impact on crop growth and productivity by crop models are key to designing effective adaptations to cope with future climate risk. However, current crop models diverge strongly in their climate impact projections. Previous studies tried to compare or improve crop models regarding the impact of one single climate variab...

Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is a major grain crop worldwide and the greatest share (ca. 60 MT/yr) is produced in Europe. However, growth rate in yields has flattened and future harvests are threatened by climate change associated with more frequent agroclimatic extremes, especially drought. Plants have developed different water management strategie...

PBE 2018, session 10, Copenhagen Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is a major grain crop worldwide and the greatest share (ca. 60 MT/yr) is produced in Europe. However, growth rate in yields has flattened and future harvests are threatened by climate change associated with more frequent agroclimatic extremes, especially drought. Plants have developed d...

Cocoa yields on the smallholder farms of Sulawesi are<500 kg/ha, yet, attainable yields are substantially higher. Seventy-three on farm trials were established in Sulawesi, Indonesia, to determine how farmers could optimize their fertilizer management considering both, factors under their control and factors beyond their control, such as the weathe...

Smallholder farming in many parts of southern Africa is characterized by the integration of livestock and cropping. Throughout summer, cattle graze rangelands, and crop areas are fenced off. Cattle are allowed to graze on crop residues in the winter. These practices can positively affect income, manure availability and farmers' prestige. However, c...

Global warming is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of severe water scarcity (SWS) events, which negatively affect rain-fed crops such as wheat, a key source of calories and protein for humans. Here, we develop a method to simultaneously quantify SWS over the world's entire wheat-growing area and calculate the probabilities of multip...

Supplement to Trnka et al 2019 Sci Adv 5, eaau2406 - DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aau2406

Rodents remain a key pest of grain crops globally. Due to the environmental risks and rodenticide resistance in rodents there has been an increased interest in ecologically based rodent control (EBRM). Predation is a key component of EBRM that is often neglected. We use data from field studies and simulation models to investigate the effect of pred...

Identifying options for the sustainable intensification of cropping systems in southern Africa under prevailing high climate risk is needed. With this in mind, we tested an intercropping system that combined the staple crop maize with lablab, a local but underutilised legume. Grain and biomass productivity was determined for four variants (i) sole...