Crop mixtures offer multiple advantages over mono-cropping. Newly developed advanced data acquisition and data analysis tools provide new insights into interactions and mechanisms in crop mixtures. This leads to a set of clearly identified, compatible crop partners. The new tools also allow for plants to be optimally allocated in field patches and for novel technologies to maintain such field patches. This results in ideal field sizes, shapes, and settings with regard to the ecosystem, biodiversity, resource use, and resource efficiency.
Research Videos
PhenoRob: Research Priorities to Leverage Smart Digital Technologies for Sustainable Crop Production
Agriculture today faces significant challenges that require new ways of thinking, such as smart digital technologies that enable innovative approaches. However, research gaps limit their potential to improve agriculture. In our PhenoRob paper “Research Priorities to Leverage Smart Digital Technologies for Sustainable Crop Production”, Sabine Seidel, Hugo Storm and Lasse Klingbeil outline an interdisciplinary agenda to address the key research gaps and advance sustainability in agriculture. They identify four critical areas: 1. Monitoring to detect weeds and the status of surrounding crops 2. Modelling to predict the yield impact and ecological impacts 3. Decision making by weighing the yield loss against the ecological impact 4. Model uptake, for example policy support to compensate farmers for ecological benefits Closing these gaps requires strong interdisciplinary collaboration. In PhenoRob, this is achieved through five core experiments, seminar and lecture series, and interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate teaching activities. The paper is available at: H. Storm, S. J. Seidel, L. Klingbeil, F. Ewert, H. Vereecken, W. Amelung, S. Behnke, M. Bennewitz, J. Börner, T. Döring, J. Gall, A. -K. Mahlein, C. McCool, U. Rascher, S. Wrobel, A. Schnepf, C. Stachniss, and H. Kuhlmann, “Research Priorities to Leverage Smart Digital Technologies for Sustainable Crop Production,” European Journal of Agronomy, vol. 156, p. 127178, 2024. doi:10.1016/j.eja.2024.127178 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1161030124000996?via%3Dihub
Estimating yield responses to climate variability and extreme events
Prof. Dr. Frank Ewert is Professor and head of the Crop Science Group, Institute of Crop Science and Resource Conservation (INRES) University of Bonn and Scientific Director of Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) Webber H, Lischeid G, Sommer M, Finger R, Nendel C, Gaiser T, Ewert F. 2020. No perfect storm for crop yield failure in Germany. Environmental Research Letters 15 (10): 104012. doi: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aba2a4 Lischeid G, Webber H, Sommer M, Nendel C, Ewert F. 2022. Machine learning in crop yield modelling: A powerful tool, but no surrogate for science. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 312, 108698. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2021.108698
Gamma Spectrometry and XRFA for Soil Analysis
PhenoRob PhD Student Daniel Pfarr talks about his research within Core Project 5: New Field Arrangements.
Deep Generative Models for Agriculture
Ribana Roscher, Professor of Data Science for Crop Systems, Institute of Bio- and Geosciences (IBG-2), Forschungszentrum Jülich, and Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation (IGG), University of Bonn gives a PhenoRob Interdisciplinary Lecture [PILS] on the topic of deep generative models for agriculture.
Controlled Multi-modal Image Generation for Plant Growth Modeling
Prof. Dr. Ribana Roscher is Professor of Data Science for Crop Systems, Institute of Bio- and Geosciences (IBG-2) at Forschungszentrum Jülich and Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation (IGG), University of Bonn M. Miranda, L. Drees and R. Roscher, “Controlled Multi-modal Image Generation for Plant Growth Modeling,” in 2022 26th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), Montreal, QC, Canada, 2022 pp. 5118-5124. doi: 10.1109/ICPR56361.2022.9956115
Faces of PhenoRob: Ribana Roscher
In Faces of PhenoRob, we introduce you to some of PhenoRob’s many members: from senior faculty to PhDs, this is your chance to meet them all and learn more about the work they do! In this video, you’ll meet Ribana Roscher, Professor of Data Science for Crop Systems at Forschungszentrum Jülich. https://www.fz-juelich.de/profile/roscher_r
Modern Sensing Applications for Analysing Plant Physiology and Interaction in Mixed Cropping
PhenoRob PhD Student Julie Kraemer talks about her research within Core Project 1 ” 4D Crop Reconstruction” and Core Project 5 “New Field Arrangements”.
Faces of PhenoRob: Frank Ewert
In Faces of PhenoRob, we introduce you to some of PhenoRob’s many members: from senior faculty to PhDs, this is your chance to meet them all and learn more about the work they do! In this video, you’ll meet Frank Ewert, Professor and Head of the Crop Science Group, Institute of Crop Science and Resource Conservation (INRES), University of Bonn and Scientific Director of Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF).
Faces of PhenoRob: Ixchel Hernández-Ochoa
In Faces of PhenoRob, we introduce you to some of PhenoRob’s many members: from senior faculty to PhDs, this is your chance to meet them all and learn more about the work they do! In this video, you’ll meet Ixchel Hernández-Ochoa, PhenoRob Postdoctoral Researcher.
Observing and Modelling Crops in Diverse Cropping Systems
PhenoRob Junior Research Group Leader Sabine Seidel talks about her research that she is doing together with her PhD Students Sofia Hadir and Dereje T. Demie within Core Project 5: New Field Arrangements.
Image-based Crop Growth Prediction
PhenoRob PhD Student Lukas Drees talks about his research within Core Project 5: New Field Arrangements.
Large Field Trials as Platforms to Develop Digital Tools for Intercropping
PhenoRob PhD Student Madhuri Paul talks about her research within Core Project 5: New Field Arrangements.
Time Dependent Image Generation of Plants from Incomplete Sequences with CNN-Transformer by L. Drees
This short trailer is based on the following publication: L. Drees, I. Weber, M. Russwurm, and R. Roscher, “Time Dependent Image Generation of Plants from Incomplete Sequences with CNN-Transformer,” in DAGM German Conference on Pattern Recognition , 2022, pp. 495-510. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16788-1_30 Full text available here: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-16788-1_30
Mixture X Genotype Effects in Cereal/Legume Intercropping by Demie et al.
This short trailer is based on the following publication: D. Demie, T. Döring, M. Finckh, W. van der Werf, J. Enjalbert, and S. Seidel, “Mixture X Genotype Effects in Cereal/Legume Intercropping,” Frontiers in Plant Science, vol. 13, 2022. doi:10.3389/fpls.2022.846720 Full text available here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2022.846720/full
Improving Agro-Ecosystem Models to Explore the Dynamics of Newly Diversified Field Arrangements
PhenoRob PhD Student Ixchel Hernandez talks about her research within Core Project 5: New Field Arrangements.
S. Seidel – R. Roscher, University of Bonn (08.09.2023)
38th PhenoRob Seminar Series with Sabine Seidel and Ribana Roscher (University of Bonn) on “Can AI help quantify pollinator ecosystem services”
Evaluation of multiple spring wheat cultivars in diverse intercropping systems
Madhuri Paul is a PhD student at the Institute Agroecology and Organic Farming, University of Bonn. M. R. Paul, D. T. Demie, S. J. Seidel, and T. F. Döring, “Evaluation of multiple spring wheat cultivars in diverse intercropping systems,” European Journal of Agronomy, vol. 152, p. 127024, 2024. [doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eja.2023.127024]
Lukas Drees – Temporal Prediction & Evaluation of Brassica Growth in the Field using cGANs (Trailer)
Watch the full presentation: http://digicrop.de/program/temporal-prediction-and-evaluation-of-brassica-growth-in-the-field-using-conditional-generative-adversarial-networks/
Effects of spring wheat / faba bean mixtures on early crop development
Madhuri Paul is a PhD student at the Institute Agroecology and Organic Farming, University of Bonn. M. R. Paul, D. T. Demie, S. J. Seidel, and T. F. Döring, “Effects of spring wheat / faba bean mixtures on early crop development,” Plant and Soil, 2023. [doi:10.1007/s11104-023-06111-6]