Ludwig Riedesel’s research while affiliated with Julius Kühn-Institut and other places

Die Zukunft der Landwirtschaft liegt in einer nachhaltigen Bewirtschaftung, die sowohl ökologische als auch wirtschaftliche Ziele verfolgt. Innovative Konzepte bieten vielversprechende Ansätze, um die Biodiversität zu schützen und gleichzeitig die wirtschaftlichen Interessen der Landwirte zu berücksichtigen. Durch eine Kombination verschiedener Förderinstrumente und innovativer Konzepte kann dieses Ziel erreicht werden. Unabhängig dessen heben die verschiedenen Modelle die Bedeutung von Kooperationen und der Zusammenarbeit zwischen öffentlichen und privaten Akteuren hervor. Diese Zusammenarbeit ist entscheidend, um die komplexen Herausforderungen der Biodiversitätsförderung in Agrarökosystemen zu meistern und langfristige Erfolge zu erzielen.

Kooperative Modelle bieten einen Lösungsansatz zur Planung, Beantragung und Umsetzung von gemeinschaftlichen Maßnahmen zum Schutz und der Förderung von Biodiversität. Erfolgreich etablierte Kooperativen aus Brandenburg zeigen die Vorteile: Flexibilität, Risikominderung, Wissenstransfer und die Berücksichtigung von naturschutzfachlichen Anforderungen. Landwirte sind in der Regel bereit, Maßnahmen umzusetzen, wenn die Rahmenbedingungen stimmen. Insofern liegt es an der Politik, die entsprechenden Rahmenbedingungen der Fördermechanismen auch in anderen Bundesländern zu schaffen, um überbetriebliche Modelle zu fördern. Eine Zusammenarbeit zwischen allen Beteiligten ist der Schlüssel, um die Herausforderungen der Zukunft zu bewältigen.

Heat and drought are major abiotic stressors threatening cereal yields, but little is known regarding the spatio-temporal development of their yield-effects. In this study, we assess genotype (G) × environment (E) × management (M) specific weather-yield relations utilizing spatially explicit weather indices (WIs) and variety trial yield data of winter wheat (Triticum aestivum) and winter rye (Secale cereale) for all German cereal growing regions and the period 1993-2021. The objectives of this study are to determine the explanatory power of different heat and drought WIs in wheat and rye, to quantify their site-specific yield effects, and to examine the development of stress tolerance from old to new varieties. We use mixed linear models with G × E × M specific covariates as fixed and random factors. We find for both crops that combined heat and drought WIs have the strongest explanatory power during the reproductive phase. Furthermore, our results strongly emphasize the importance of site conditions regarding climate resilience, where poor sites reveal two to three times higher yield losses than sites with high soil quality and high annual precipitation in both crops. Finally, our analysis reveals significantly higher stress-induced absolute yield losses in modern vs. older varieties for both crops, while relative losses also significantly increased in wheat but did not change in rye. Our findings highlight the importance of site conditions and the value of high-yielding locations for global food security. They further underscore the need to integrate site-specific considerations more effectively into agricultural strategies and breeding programs.

Crop yields are increasingly affected by climate change-induced weather extremes in Germany. However, there is still little knowledge of the specific crop-climate relations and respective heat and drought stress-induced yield losses. Therefore, we configure weather indices (WIs) that differ in the timing and intensity of heat and drought stress in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). We construct these WIs using gridded weather and phenology time series data from 1995 to 2019 and aggregate them with Germany-wide municipality level on-farm wheat yield data. We statistically analyze the WI’s explanatory power and region-specific effect size for wheat yield using linear mixed models. We found the highest explanatory power during the stem elongation and booting phase under moderate drought stress and during the reproductive phase under moderate heat stress. Furthermore, we observed the highest average yield losses due to moderate and extreme heat stress during the reproductive phase. The highest heat and drought stress-induced yield losses were observed in Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, and northern Bavaria, while similar heat and drought stresses cause much lower yield losses in other regions of Germany.