On Friday 16 September 2022 the Schweizer Obstverband (Swiss Fruit Association), Agroscope and the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture FiBL welcomed attendees to the second RESO symposium. After two years’ research into the development of methods for determining varietal resilience, the project team presented its current trial results.
The aim of the ‘Proof by Underpants’ project was to obtain exten-sive information on the soil quality of gardens and farms, for the first time with the help of the general population. Initial results show that humus plays a key role in the soil, helping it cope better with climate-induced drought.
Agroscope has developed a scoring system for plant protection in vegetable crops. The system enables the creation of incentives for reducing the use and environmental risks of plant-protection products and promoting preventive and non-chemical measures.
Agroscope has set up a ‘Home Garden’ pilot plant on its Conthey site to transfer its expertise in indoor-farming research to the ‘Home Garden’ system developed by the Zurich-based company Pleasant Plants.
A wide variety of creatures live in the soil: invertebrates as well as bacteria and fungi. Besides improving soil structure and composition, they can be of direct benefit to crops by making nutrients available to them or by attacking pathogens.
A video gives a brief explanation of the problem of compacted subsoils and introduces the ROCSUB Project which studies different ways of regenerating a severely compacted subsoil.
Researchers from WSL, Agroscope and Vrije University Amsterdam have applied methods from futurology to identify four megatrends in European agriculture. This study should help to master the challenges of the future.
Many consumer goods contain activated carbon, which can be contaminated with pollutants like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Agroscope showed that current analytical methods and legal bases used to address PAH content are incomplete.
Dry summers can see a loss of up to 25% of total Swiss roughage production. This is because grassland yields are strongly correlated with summer drought, as shown by a new analysis conducted by Agroscope and the Swiss Farmers’ Union.
