ReGenFarm - Regenerative agriculture for a sustainable future
ReGenFarm aims to tackle critical agricultural and environmental challenges by implementing carbon farming practices to sequester atmospheric carbon, and enhance soil fertility. We want to apply innovative land use strategies to improve environmental security while ensuring sustainable agricultural productivity, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and restoring farmland health.
Together with Bayer Crop Science, the Institutes of Bio-and Geosciences of the Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH work in five action fields to provide the scientific basis for advancing regenerative agriculture.
In my action field I am designing a digital twin of a farm, based on real-world data, to test agricultural management practices. The digital twin will inform better decision-making for regenerative farming practices and help us to boost soil carbon sequestration.
Field Minirhizotron Facilities
The field minirhizotron facilities in Selhausen, Germany, provide a unique platform for obtaining data on soil-plant interactions. Built by Forschungszentrum Jülich (IBG-3) within the TERENO network, they consist of two sites with different soil types but the same climate. Each site has 7-meter-long transparent rhizotubes at six depths, used for minirhizotron imaging and ground-penetrating radar, alongside soil sensors measuring temperature, moisture, and matric potential. The agricultural field is divided into three plots to study different management practices, including irrigation, sowing variations, and root traits. This setup improves the understanding of root growth and soil water distribution under varying conditions. In the past, experiments on crop mixtures, drought stress, and sowing density were conducted. Currently, the facilities are used to investigate different nitrogen fertilization treatments. The data are openly available.
🔗 Learn more about the minirhizotron facilities
Crop Responses under Phosphate Deficiency: Integration of Plant Physiology in Sensing and Modeling
This project is focused on enhancing crop phosphorus (P) use efficiency by integrating plant physiology with sensing and modeling. Non-invasive sensors and digital phenotyping are used to correlate plant architectural responses to P deficiency with physiological traits. Environmental factors influencing P efficiency are analyzed to develop computational models (functional-structural plant models – FSPMs) predicting crop development and function under P deficiency. This improves the understanding of above- and below-ground interactions and the link between plant structural response and function. Through this approach, we aim to contribute to sustainable agriculture and reduce environmental impact by decreasing fertilizer input and increasing efficiency.
My task was the identification of structural response parameters and the design of the FSPM, allowing the prediction of structural and functional responses to phosphorus deficiency for one of the most important crops for human nutrition: Zea mays.
The Crop Responses under Phosphate Deficiency project is part of the PhenoRob Cluster of Excellence.