Agriculture: greater yield through variety?
An experiment has proven that mixtures of different plant species grow better than monocultures. This finding could soon be applied in the agricultural sector.
It is the norm that agricultural crops are primarily grown as monocultures because it makes them easier to handle and facilitates harvest. But we know from natural ecosystems that plant diversity has a positive impact on plant growth. This biodiversity effect is based on interactions both among different plants and between the plants and the soil. Could it perhaps be used to good effect in the agricultural sector?
Several members of the Swiss Plant Science Web collaborate to investigate this topic: Christian Schoeb ETHZ, Pascal Niklaus (Zurich University) and Samuel Wüst (formerly Zurich University now agroscope) and their teams, together with international colleagues.
Source (articles in several languages available)
- horizons, Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF Agriculture: greater yield through variety?
- horizonte, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds Kommt bald das Ende der Monokultur in der Landwirtschaft?
- horizons, Fonds national suisse (FNS) La monoculture n’est pas forcément efficace