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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.

2019

Abstract

Plants are exposed to various pathogens in their environment and have developed immune systems with multiple defense layers to prevent infections. However, often pathogens overcome these resistance barriers, infect plants and cause disease. Pathogens that cause diseases on economically important crop plants incur huge losses to the agriculture industry. For example, the 2016 outbreak of strawberry grey mold (Botrytis cinerea) in Norway caused up to 95% crop losses. Such outbreaks underline the importance of developing novel and sustainable tools to combat plant diseases, for example by increasing the plants’ natural disease resistance. Priming plant defenses using chemical elicitors may enhance resistance against multiple pathogens. Such an approach may reduce the use of chemical fungicides and pesticides that often select for resistant strains of pests and pathogens. My presentation will focus on the effectiveness of different chemical agents to prime woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca) defenses against the necrotroph B. cinerea. We have identified several genes that seem to play a role in disease resistance in strawberry and associated epigenetic memory mechanisms. Our results point out new management avenues for more sustainable crop protection schemes.

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Abstract

Farmers, researchers and policy-makers are increasingly concerned about the potential impacts of climate change. Researchers are using various climate models to assess the impacts and identifying relevant alternative adaptation strategies to mitigate climate change. In India, rice is the major cereal crop grown and is influenced due to climate change and variability, inadequate water supply, labour shortage and methane emissions from rice ecosystems. This necessitates adoption action and upscaling of key adaption strategies like direct seeded rice (DSR) using validated data from rice growing areas in India. The study used experimental data of 2010–2014 and field survey data of DSR and non-DSR farmers collected during 2014. Results show that DSR method has incurred less tillage and labour costs by eluding puddling and transplantation by labour. Large-scale adoption of DSR was observed during 2012–2015 in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh. This was mainly due to the delayed monsoon and water supply, reduction in cost of cultivation, capacity building of stakeholders and their active involvement in awareness and training programmes. The study has demonstrated that integrated extension approach in technology dissemination and scaling-out through stakeholder integration is crucial. However, a mission mode framework is needed for technology upscaling at system level.