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Publications

NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.

2024

Abstract

Successful introduction of the new cultivars requires proper pomological, phenological and as well as technological evaluation. It is particularly important at the harsh Norwegian climate conditions. Investigations were conducted with apple cultivar ‘Eden‘ / ‘Wursixo‘ (WUR 6), with the aim to establish an optimal balance between yield, fruit quality and bearing regularity. Four different crop load levels were tested in 3 consecutive years in the orchard planted 3.5 x 1 m and trained as slender spindle. Lower crop load levels guaranteed good return bloom, a very high share of fruits harvested during the first picking, and larger fruits. Increasing crop load led to less intensive return bloom, smaller fruit sizes and higher share of fruits harvested during the second picking. It was found that ‘Eden‘ is strictly alternating cultivar and precise crop load levels according to the tree age and tree vigour were defined. In order to keep ‘Eden‘ trees in regular bearing mode crop load levels should be maintained at 4.5-5 fruits cm-2 of trunk cross-sectional area (TCSA) in the 3rd and 6-7 fruits in the 4th growing season

Abstract

Semi-natural hay meadows are among the most species-rich habitats in Norway as well as in Europe. To maintain the biodiversity of hay meadows, it is important to understand local management regimes and the land use history that has shaped them and their biodiversity. There is however a general erosion of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), related to hay meadows and other semi-natural habitats. This review aims to examine historical and written sources of land use practices related to hay meadows and to discuss the implications of a re-introduction of TEK in present and future management practices. Traditional land use practices and TEK obtained from written sources from four Norwegian regions and for the country as a whole are compared with present management practices. Written sources show that hay meadows have been managed in a complex but flexible way. Today's management regimes of hay meadows in Norway are streamlined and strongly simplified, most often involving only one late mowing and in some cases grazing. This simplification may result in loss of biodiversity. The potential to include more variety of management practices in hay meadows, by utilizing knowledge from written sources more systematically in combination with farmers’ experienced knowledge (TEK) should be better utilized. Such an approach may secure both the biodiversity in hay meadows and TEK for the future. Former and present landscape ecological contexts in the infield-outlying land system show that management should be done for larger landscapes rather than small, isolated hay meadows, to optimize biodiversity conservation. For this study, we conducted a Norwegian literature review, based on ethnographical and ethnobotanical sources, as well as historical and present agricultural statistics, historical maps, results from research projects, and other sources. Our findings are discussed with similar European studies focusing on the historical management of hay meadows.

To document

Abstract

Climate change, landscape homogenization, and the decline of beneficial insectsthreaten pollination services to wild plants and crops. Understanding how pollinationpotential (i.e. the capacity of ecosystems to support pollination of plants) is affectedby climate change and landscape homogenization is fundamental for our ability topredict how such anthropogenic stressors affect plant biodiversity. Models of pollina-tor potential are improved when based on pairwise plant–pollinator interactions andpollinator’s plant preferences. However, whether the sum of predicted pairwise interac-tions with a plant within a habitat (a proxy for pollination potential) relates to pollendeposition on flowering plants has not yet been investigated. We sampled plant–beeinteractions in 68 Scandinavian plant communities in landscapes of varying land-coverheterogeneity along a latitudinal temperature gradient of 4–8°C, and estimated pollendeposition as the number of pollen grains on flowers of the bee-pollinated plants Lotuscorniculatus and Vicia cracca. We show that plant–bee interactions, and the pollinationpotential for these bee-pollinated plants increase with landscape diversity, annual meantemperature, and plant abundance, and decrease with distances to sand-dominatedsoils. Furthermore, the pollen deposition in flowers increased with the predicted pol-lination potential, which was driven by landscape diversity and plant abundance. Ourstudy illustrates that the pollination potential, and thus pollen deposition, for wildplants can be mapped based on spatial models of plant–bee interactions that incorpo-rate pollinator-specific plant preferences. Maps of pollination potential can be used toguide conservation and restoration planning. ecological networks, ecosystem service mapping, landscape diversity, plant–pollinator interactions, pollination