Project start: 01.02.2022
Project end: 30.09.2025
Sponsor: Hessisches Ministerium für Landwirtschaft und Umwelt, Weinbau, Forsten, Jagd und Heimat

The transdisciplinary consortium of science, practice and exchange service addresses practice-oriented questions of organic vegetable productionin 3-year yield experiments. The topics result from preceding workshops with organic vegetable farmers in Hesse. The most urgent topics are studied both at farm level and at the research site of Geisenheim University to derive practical measures to overcome the faced issues. Findings will be disseminated jointly to the practice. Drought has been identified as the most pressing issue for organic vegetable farmers. Particulary in vegetable crop cultivation, drought may cause not only yield reduction but also to total losses due to quality deficits. Extreme heat and drought events may be counteracted by increasing the water storage capacity and infiltration rate of the cultivated soil. Soils that are capable to store more water require less frequent irrigation and can handle larger irrigation quantities, thus reducing evaporative losses. In context of climate change, improved infiltration rate can reduce runoff losses caused by heavy rainfall and ultimately replenishes the soil water storage. Practical measures that support elevating water storage capacity and infiltration rate of farmer's soils can therefore improve soil water uptake and water availability to crops. We aim to achieve this by enriching the soil with organic matter. In our trials, we are testing different composts to improve soil water relations considering farm specific soil and crop management. The agromomic effect of the treatments is used to evaluate the measures. In addition, participating farmers are testing further treatments that combine compost with biochar, fertilizers or ground covers to pursue farm-specific interests for sustainable and climateresilient crop production. In this way, we aim to achieve the overall goal of increasing the resilience of the cropping system and stabilizing yields, so that organically farmed areas can be expanded.