Press archive
The press archive offers information from the Faculty of Agriculture on new appointments, the approval of and results from research projects, publications, visits, various activities and much more.
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Rainforest protection is not only good for biodiversity and the climate – it also noticeably improves the health of humans who live in the corresponding regions. This is the conclusion drawn by a current study by the University of Bonn and the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil. In this, the researchers show that measures to combat slash-and-burn techniques significantly reduce the concentration of particulate matter in the air. The number of hospital stays and deaths due to respiratory diseases thus also decreases. The results have been published now in the journal Nature Communications, Earth & Environment.
IROS 2024 Best Agri-Robotics Paper Award for the PhenoRob paper "BonnBeetClouds3D: A Dataset Towards Point Cloud-Based Organ-Level Phenotyping of Sugar Beet Plants Under Real Field Conditions" presented by Elias Marks and finalist for the IROS 2024 Best Agri-Robotics Paper Award for the PhenoRob paper "Spatio-Temporal Consistent Mapping of Growing Plants for Agricultural Robots in the Wild" presented by Luca Lobefaro at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2024) in Abu Dhabi.
The University of Bonn has once again demonstrated its excellence as a research institution in the latest Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2024—part of the high-profile Shanghai Ranking. Mathematics and Economics held on to their respective first-place rankings in Germany, enjoyed for several years now. Agricultural Sciences now ranks third nationally.
University of Bonn’s Institute for Geodesy and Geoinformation (IGG) joins global efforts in advancing Geodesy as a Partner of the United Nations Geodetic Centre of Excellence (UN-GGCE) in Bonn.
What has been known up until now as the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Bonn is being renamed the Faculty of Agricultural, Nutritional, and Engineering Sciences with immediate effect. The faculty is taking this step in order to better reflect the specialist fields that it covers by giving equal weight to the nutritional and engineering sciences alongside the agricultural sciences.
Jensen et al. (2024), including IGG scientists Helena Gerdener and Jürgen Kusche, evaluate trends in terrestrial water storage over 1950–2100 in CMIP6 climate models against the IGG GLWS2.0 global reanalysis from assimilating GRACE and GRACE-FO satellite observations into a hydrological model. The results were now published in the journal npj climate and atmopsheric sciences.
We eat too much meat in Germany and this not only has a negative impact on health but is also damaging for the environment and climate. Cafeteria owners are increasingly open to the idea of serving smaller portions of meat – especially for cost reasons. But how do you encourage their customers to choose smaller portions of meat? Researchers at the University of Bonn have been investigating this question at a cafeteria in a rehabilitation clinic. The desired effect was the biggest when the team at the cafeteria simply served smaller portions of meat and only topped them up when this was requested by customers. This approach was also largely accepted by patrons. The results have now been published in the journal “Environment and Behavior.”
There have never been so many ERC Starting Grants at once at the University of Bonn: no fewer than seven researchers have been successful with their applications in the highly competitive European Research Council (ERC) funding process. With their funding of some €1.5 million each, the researchers from the fields of ethics, mathematics, economics, soil science, computer science and astronomy will be able to realize their projects over the next five years.
How will crops grow in the future under the aggravated conditions of climate change? Future research projects at the University of Bonn will use the new climate chamber greenhouse, in which temperature, humidity and light can be regulated for experiments with the highest precision. This new 656 square-meter climate chamber-greenhouse complex, which was built at the Faculty of Agriculture, has now been inaugurated and will be used by researchers from several faculties.
A high-sugar diet is seen as a risk factor for obesity and chronic illness. University of Bonn researchers have analyzed data on sugar intake among children and adolescents in a long-term study, finding that intake has been declining steadily since 2010—but is still above the level recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). The results, to be published in the European Journal of Nutrition, is already available online.
Some of the country’s leading centers for robotics have joined forces and set up a consortium to develop the new Robotics Institute Germany (RIG), which is set to become its first port of call for the robotics industry. The consortium’s coordinator Professor Angela Schoellig from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and RIG speaker Professor Tamim Asfour from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) unveiled the concept for AI-based robotics at the AI-Based Robotics conference in Berlin entitled. Launching on July 1, 2024, the project is being funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with €20 million over the next four years, and the University of Bonn is heavily involved.
Researchers at the University of Bonn have developed software that can simulate the growth of field crops. To do this, they fed thousands of photos from field experiments into a learning algorithm. This enabled the algorithm to learn how to visualize the future development of cultivated plants based on a single initial image. Using the images created during this process, parameters such as leaf area or yield can be estimated accurately. The results have been published in the journal Plant Methods.
As part of its efforts to strengthen top-level research, the German Research Foundation (DFG) funds a number of consortia known as Collaborative Research Centers (CRCs), some of which are implemented by several universities working together. Below are the details of the CRCs involving the University of Bonn for which funding is set to continue.
Maize can grow successfully in very different local conditions. An international study headed by the University of Bonn has now demonstrated the important role of the plant root system. The researchers analyzed more than 9,000 varieties in the study and were able to show that their roots varied considerably – depending on how dry the location is where each variety was cultivated. They were also able to identify an important gene that plays a role in the plant’s ability to adapt. This gene could be the key to developing varieties of maize that cope better with climate change. The results were recently published in the prestigious journal Nature Genetics.
Our diet puts a strain on planetary resources. Shifting to a sustainable diet that benefits both our health and that of the planet is therefore assuming increasing importance. Researchers at the University of Bonn have analyzed the diets of children and adolescents in terms of their contribution to the ecological sustainability indicators of greenhouse gas emissions, land use and water use. The study shows that there is both the potential and a need to make the diet of younger generations more sustainable. The study will be published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition; it is already available online.
Less waste generated by the trauma surgery team at the University Hospital, more vegetarian and vegan food in the canteens, research into ultra-resource-efficient products—the Sustainability Day 2024 showcased everything that the University of Bonn is doing to aid the environmental transformation. Students and staff had taken up Team N’s invitation in their droves and came to find out more about sustainability-related initiatives. Besides a wealth of information on the topic, the over 20 stalls set out on the Poppelsdorf Campus also provided a range of hands-on activities that made one thing clear above all else: sustainability is fun!
A special honor: Prof. Wulf Amelung was admitted to the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts. This makes him one of ten new members that the Academy will welcome in 2024. The newly admitted researchers and artists have extraordinary expertise in their fields: this year they range from Jewish studies to soil science and photography. The ceremonial admission to the traditional institution takes place today as part of the Academy's annual celebration.
Plants adapt genetically over time to the special conditions of organic farming. This has been demonstrated in a long-term study conducted at the University of Bonn. The researchers planted barley plants on two neighboring fields and used conventional farming methods on one and organic methods on the other. Over the course of more than 20 years, the organic barley was enriched with specific genetic material that differed from the comparative culture. Among other things, the results demonstrate how important it is to cultivate varieties especially for organic farming. The results have now been published in the journal “Agronomy for Sustainable Development.”
It may be possible to change the purchasing behavior of consumers noticeably using some simple strategies. At least this is what a study, carried out by the University of Bonn and the Technical University of Munich, indicates. The researchers investigated the effect of nudging on the sale of products produced with high animal welfare standards in a virtual supermarket. Nudges are gentle prods or pushes designed to promote certain behaviors – such as placing some products in more visible positions. In the experiment, the participants in the nudging group selected products produced with high animal welfare standards about twice as frequently as the control group. The extent to which these results can be transferred to real purchasing decisions is still unclear. The study has now been published in the journal “Appetite.”
There can be no analysis without data. In this spirit, researchers from the University of Bonn and the Swiss Federal Institution of Technology (ETH) Zurich have published a database containing over 6,000 agri-environmental policies, thus enabling their peers as well as policymakers and businesses to seek answers to all manner of different questions. The researchers have used two examples to demonstrate how this can be done: how a country’s economic development is linked to its adoption of agri-environmental policies and how such policies impact soil erosion. Their study has now been published in “Nature Food.”
Tiny organisms such as bacteria and fungi help to promote the health and function of plant roots. It is commonly assumed that the composition of these microbes is dependent on the properties of the soil. However, an international team of researchers led by the University of Bonn has now discovered when studying different local varieties of maize that the genetic makeup of the plants also helps to influence which microorganisms cluster around the roots. The results, which have now been published in the prestigious journal Nature Plants, could help to breed future varieties of maize that are better suited to drought and limited nutrients.
A new variety of rice that is adapted to life in low-phosphorus soils, that contains an exceptionally large amount of zinc and that was developed specifically for the conditions in Madagascar where it is grown, has recently been certified in the country. The variety was created under the leadership of plant scientist Professor Matthias Wissuwa from the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS) and the PhenoRob Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bonn which he joined as a visiting professor in spring 2023, together with the Africa Rice Center and the National Centre of Applied Research for Rural Development in Madagascar (FOFIFA).
How can we encourage consumers to pay more attention to animal welfare aspects when they purchase meat? It now appears that this cannot be achieved solely by making the animal husbandry labels more visible. At least this is what the findings of a study carried out by the University of Bonn and TU Munich tend to indicate. In this study, the researchers invited test subjects to go shopping in a virtual supermarket. However, placing banners and labels indicating the type of animal husbandry on the shelves had no effect on their purchasing decisions. The results have now been published in the Journal of Consumer Protection and Food Safety.
The transformation of global agricultural and food systems due to climate change, loss of biodiversity, changes in land use and demographic changes poses new challenges for society and politics. The Permanent DFG Senate Commission “Transformation of Agricultural and Food Systems” has the task of researching this change and preparing scientifically sound information.
Evidence-based policy advice at its best: the Bioeconomy Advisory Board NRW, with two members from the University of Bonn, began its work yesterday.
The state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hendrik Wüst, visited the Humanoid Robots Lab at the University of Bonn on Thursday afternoon. Talks centered on current research projects in the field of robotics and the challenges associated with the use of robots in human environments. The state premier was able to enter virtual reality with a robot and watch a three-armed robot harvesting peppers.