Control

The use of antibiotics is not permitted in Switzerland; moreover, no other medication exists to combat European foul brood. Hives with symptoms must therefore be destroyed in order to limit the outbreak, and the contaminated material must be sanitised. Since prevention is the best cure, early detection is desirable. Numerous studies have been undertaken and documents have been created at the Swiss Bee Research Centre and elsewhere to draw the attention of beekeepers to these problems and inform them about the causes and the control measures to be implemented.

Merkblatt zur erkennung von Bienenbrutkrankheiten (German (PDF, 357 kB, 18.10.2017) and French (PDF, 226 kB, 02.02.2017))
M. Tschumi (2011)

Impacts of forb abundance on plant nutrition indexes along the growing season in intensively managed permanent grasslands.

Institutional Repository Agroscope

Perotti E., Huguenin-Elie O., Meisser M., Dubois S., Probo M., Mariotte P.

Impacts of forb abundance on plant nutrition indexes along the growing season in intensively managed permanent grasslands.

Grassland Science in Europe, 25, 2020, 424-426.

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Lien: Grassland Science in Europe Vol. 25

Résumé:

Plant nutrition indexes are important tools to estimate forage nutritional status and adjust fertilisation to plants requirements. However, these indexes have initially been developed for grasses and may be ill-suited to grasslands with relatively high abundance of forbs. To test the validity of nutrition indexes (NI) for forb-rich grasslands, we set up an experiment involving nine intensively managed permanent grasslands across Switzerland with contrasted plant composition and soil fertility. e three first harvests of the year 2018 were sorted into grasses, forbs and legumes. Forb abundance in plots ranged from 2 to 74% while legumes represented less than 5% on average. We measured nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) content of bulk forage and grasses, and calculated the respective nutrition indexes (NNI, PNI, KNI) separately for both. e PNI and KNI calculated for bulk forage and grasses were slightly different and differences varied among harvests. In addition, we found a strong discrepancy between grasses and forage NNI (up to 70% difference), which was independent of the harvest but influenced by forb abundance. Overall, our findings suggest an increasing underestimation of N fertiliser needs of grasses with an increasing abundance of forbs when using bulk NNI.

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