Agricultural scientists in Uganda under their umbrella body the National Agriculture Research Organization (Naro) conduct research basing on farming community needs.

This is done in relation to developing crop varieties for increased yield, disease and pest resistance, nutritional value and drought resistance among others.

However agricultural scientists in Germany conduct research in crop breeding focusing on developing varieties of crops grown in temperate climate focusing on climate change challenges and how farmers can adopt varieties which favor the climate.

They put into consideration topics such as plant genetics, plant nutrition, plant health, plant protection in horticulture and forests.

The key crops they are conducting research on include wheat, apples, sugar beet, Canola including forestry where most farmers grow Christmas trees for commercialization.

Background

Germany is a federally structured country with federal states known as singular land (lander) in terms of the agricultural sector

This has implications also for the organization of publicly funded agricultural research in Germany.

University research is under the authority of each Land and the federal government and most lander maintain their own research institutions for policy advice, information for extension services and for practitioners.

In several states, chambers of agriculture, funded by contributions from farmers and the state governments also conduct agricultural research.

Research institutes with a special thematic focus have mixed funding from federal and state governments and belong to one of several associations

In addition, there are other research institutes with public funding. 

The largest funder of public research is the federal government. It is funding the research institutions within the portfolios of ministries.

Similarly, the lander fund their own research institutions and support the chambers of agriculture.

The Ministry of Food and Agriculture does collaborate with a number of African countries with Uganda’s research Institutions collaborating under European Union arrangement.

As such Science Digest25.com had the opportunity to interact with scientists at Julius Kuhn Institute (JKI)located at Podsdam the largest city of Germany State of Brandenburg which is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg.

It is the Germany Federal Research Centre for cultivated plants and below are the details African Farmers including those in Uganda can learn lesson.

Climate change Research in Cropping System to improve Global Food Security

The Director of the Institute  Dr Hella Kehlenbeck explained that the Institute that the Institute was constituted in 2005.

Her team of scientists usually conduct participatory research with farmers focusing on the research areas of long term field experiments with farmers assessing the impact of climate change on crops, plant protection issues and tools and technology to support environmental impact mitigations.

This is done with financial budget 2022 with federal budget worthy 101 million euros and third party funds of 15 million Euros.

Research officer Jugen Schwarz explaining the long term field assessment in a site at at Dahnsdorf in w wheat field noted that the scientists do this by relying on mean annual precipitation which is 571mm with mean annual temperature of 9.6 degrees Celsius.

The soil composition is a mixture of 57.9%, silt 37.5%, clay4.6%, organic substance 1.4% and PH value of 5.8. This is a continuous research which has been running from 1997- 2021.

Giving reasons for such long term trials, Jugen notes that it is for purposes measuring the population dynamics of soil born pests, diseases and weeds.

This enables the team to advice on which pesticides can be developed for resistance to increase yields as well as to asses nitrogen and energy efficiency use.

Assessing the impact of climate change on crops

Dr Till Feike a research officer at the Institute explained that since the country is also faced with prolonged dry spell, they scientists are conducting research in what the call process based crop modelling where they asses heat induced crop yield losses, projected yield increase until mid – century, adverse weather effects with carbon dioxide fertilization as key driver.  

He contends that most farmers in Germany grow winter wheat and his team collects weather data by conducting research right from green house to establish the climate chamber condition.

The yield data from 1995-2019 has been 11.500 per hectare and during heat stress where the temperature is 27 degrees Celsius the yield loss is 0.76%

The projection is that winter wheat yield will be on increase   until 2060 because scientists would have developed varieties which are resistant to climate change stress.

This year’s data collection indicated that the current climate change projections indicated wheat quality and yield deteriorated due to prolonged drought.

The team recommended the federal government to increase funding for scientists to develop better varieties to adopt the future climate change challenges.

The most common wheat disease in Germany is wheat rust and the scientists are already studying the disease pattern in order to develop varieties which resist wheat rust

Plant protection

Dr Silke Dachbrod Saaydeh and Betina Klocke are in charge of this research and they explained that this section deals mainly with pesticide use on farms. Farmers are advised to follow the EU legislation 2009 for sustainable pesticide use.

The team also advises the farmers to follow guidelines from the Ministry of food and agriculture about plant protection where environmental risks must be reduced by 30% until 2023.

Human health residuals in food and feed must be 1% in most important domestic food products

The most common pests the team identified in crops grown such as horticulture and beetles, Aphids, mouth vineyard which trigger high amount of pesticide use

Farmers are advised to use resistant cultivars including what varieties resistant to wheat rust.

Tools to support environmental impact mitigation

Dr Jorn Strassemeyer explained that pesticide residues from farmer fields often found flowing into water bodies.

His team developed a technology which can be used to identify hot spots of such areas to help farmers.

It is internet based using GIS where farmers can consult from the application for risk assessment of pesticide strategy for reduction on environmental risk.

Once a farmer or scientist is using the application, he or she can look at the different exposure areas of water contamination runways and asses toxicity.

The web address is http://synops.julius-kuehnde/">http://synops.julius-kuehnde and once a farmer logs it on, he or she needs to great a password to access the information available.

This is because the same farmers who are over applying pesticides will use the same contaminated water for irrigation and other agricultural production.

Jorn and his team are also developing an application to detect greenhouse emission into the atmosphere with the already developed application

Some of the features of the tool include pesticide trends and data base information and map viewer. A good number of farmers have registered online to access information for managing their farms.

Ministry of agriculture activity

Dr Cornelia Berns, the head of International Cooperation, global food policy at the ministry of Food and Agriculture explained that her ministry works in collaboration with the research institutes conducting research in crops, animals and fisheries.

She explained that her ministry in most cases does not give direct support to African countries including Uganda but in collaboration with Food and Agriculture Organiastion (FAO) which is able to reach out to various farming communities in the world.

The emphasis is put of global food security where farmers are urged to take charge of climate security for the future of food security.

This therefore calls for taking care of biodiversity by using it efficiently and other areas of attention are to ensure transparent rules I global food trade on equal terms to maintain sustainable supply chins.

This is usually done at negotiations at world level involving country representatives in the agricultural value chain meeting where countries are urged to keep their markets open.

She notes that there is deliberate negotiations on food policy issues with the African Union for purposes of maintaining food security in Africa.

Her ministry encourages every country in the world to collaborate with agricultural scientists who are in charge of developing agricultural commodities preferred by country consumers.