ICROFS has received 20 strong Organic RDD 7 applications. Eight projects have now been selected.

As the name suggests, red mark syndrome (RMS) is a disease that causes red wound-like marks on farmed rainbow trout. The disease does not kill the fish, but makes them less attractive for human consumption and thus lowers their value.

“Eat your peas” is not just sternly yelled at picky children. A lot of good reasons to eat legumes exist. Slowly, the grain legumes get more and more attention in Denmark as well. Michelin chef Francis Cardenau praises them, and edamame beans have transitioned from sushi restaurants to almost every supermarket. Nonetheless, in Denmark, grain legumes for human consumption make up a very small part of the production. The new project, GrainLegsGo, wants to change that. Fresh grain legumes for human consumption could be relevant for organic producers in particular, as legumes contribute with nutrients and could, when harvested green, have a positive effect on both carbon storage and nitrogen loss.

Leanne Peixoto will this summer graduate as a Ph.D. from Department of Agroecology, Aarhus University, where she worked on the Deep Frontier project, focusing on carbon storage in deep soil layers. Some of her findings during the project were quite surprising, and they emphasize the need to better understand interactions and activities in deep soil layers, if the potential of soil carbon storage in agriculture is to be wholly unfolded.

As part of her Ph.D.-studies at Dept. of Plant and Environmental Sciences at University of Copenhagen, Guanying Chen has studied deep root and water- and nitrogen uptake during the course of the Deep Root project. She has carried out studies in the root towers facilities, focusing on the crops chicory and winter rapeseed. This led to some interesting and quite surprising findings.

EURAKNOS, marks a key milestone: publication of the EURAKNOS Explorer’s Guide to Thematic Networks. This manual offers advice on how to design and implement Thematic Networks to maximise user engagement and impact, starting at the pre-funding phase running through project implementation to sustainability post-funding.

Growing deep-rooted perennial crop attracts the attention of researchers and farmers to address modern agricultural challenges such as improving drought resistance. Alfalfa and intermediate wheatgrass are capable of taking up water to a depth of 2.0 m in the soil. However, understanding the farming context in which such crops would be beneficial remains complex.

Deep roots have become a hot topic in agricultural science. That is due to the fact that they allow the crop to exploit unused nutrients and water from the deep soil layers thereby increasing the sustainability of agriculture. However, most of the current agricultural cropping systems cannot utilize deep soil resources efficiently. The main limitation is the rooting depth, which it too shallow to access what subsoil has to offer. Intercropping is a one way to enhance the deep root growth of agricultural crops.