Profile

Description of working areas:

My research is focused on the development of environmentally friendly cropping systems for vegetable production. Much of the work has been on nitrogen supply and reduction of nitrate leaching, the use of catch crops, and organic vegetable production.

An important topic has been crop root growth, and the significance of root growth for nitrogen uptake and nitrate leaching. I have worked with root growth of vegetable crops, catch crops, green manure crops, and cereals. The studies have shown that several of the plant species we grow can have effective rooting depths of 2 meters or more, and that this deep rooting is important when trying to reduce nitrate leaching losses.

Knowledge about crop root growth can be used to develop environmentally friendly cropping systems, where less nitrogen is left in the soil for leaching to the environment, and more is used by the crops. I have worked with the development of cropping systems in a number of projects, based on studies of crop root growth, studies of catch crops, nitrogen in soil and plants, and on model simulation of soil-crop nitrogen dynamics.

Growing catch crops, green manures and changing crop rotations affect many other things than nitrogen dynamics. I have been involved in a several studies where we have studied effects on other plant nutrients, soil biology, pests and diseases and effects on product quality of vegetables. Currently I am project leader of a big project called VegQure , where we study how organic production and three different forms of organic production affect vegetable yield, product quality and content of secondary metabolites, natural regulation of pest insects in the field, as well as nutrient dynamics and environmental effects.