South Africa is slowly lifting out of the water – by up to two millimeters per year depending on the region. It had been assumed up to now that this phenomenon was due to mantle flow in the Earth’s crust. However, a study carried out by the University of Bonn now provides another explanation: Droughts and the associated water loss are the main reason for this land uplift. The results have now been published in the “Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.”

At the PhenoRob and University of Bonn Start-Up DynamoBot, we are building the next generation of precision farming and precision weed management for farmers.

Higher education analyst Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) has published its international subject rankings for the year, in which 1,747 universities from around the world, including the University of Bonn, are compared based on various indicator criteria. Once again this year, the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences achieved excellent rankings.

Plant diseases often exhibit a patchy distribution within fields. The application of fungicides, however, is often based on environmental conditions and visual assessment and then, in practice, is homogeneous over entire fields. A site-specific control of plant diseases with robotics and drone technology provides the potential to improve the efficacy of disease control while reducing the negative impact on agricultural ecosystems..

The PhenoRob Digital Agricultural Avatar is a software that facilitates access and usability of process-based simulation agro-models under one roof. Our aim is to provide information and a usage platform to make process-based agro-models available in an appealing way both for users as well as for the public.

Field margins, floral plantings, and crops offering nectar and pollen to insects may contribute to ecosystem service delivery (pollination) and ecological intensification of agriculture. The application of machine learning on data collected using low-cost RGB cameras represents a new opportunity to investigate, evaluate, and optimize the attractiveness of such cropping systems to beneficial insects.

Digitalization is ushering in far-reaching change in all areas of our lives, not least in the agricultural sector. Researchers from the University of Bonn have now presented a study on how international agricultural corporations and Big Tech firms are using digital platforms to transform the agriculture industry. They make it clear that, although the technologies harbor significant potential, they also risk amplifying existing power structures and creating new dependencies.

A balanced diet is important for reducing hunger and malnutrition. Researchers thus advocate that small farmers in low- and middle-income countries should try to produce as many different foods as possible for their own consumption. However, a new study is now questioning this recommendation to some extent. It suggests that good access to regional markets is more important than farmers growing a large diversity of crops on their own smallholding. Better-functioning markets increase the variety of foods available locally, which benefits the population as a whole. The results are being published in the journal “Nature Food.”