Development of sustainable combine harvesting technology for organic farming in Hesse (BioDruschTec)

Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Rainer Waldhardt

Editor: Taulant Shabani

Project runtime: 2023-2026

Funding: State of Hesse

Development of sustainable combine harvesting technology for organic farming in Hesse 

The aim of the project is the further development of an innovative harvesting technique for sustainable weed control on organically managed arable land in Hesse. In doing so, the project is based on the results of a project that developed and tested the prototype of a technique for collecting weed seeds during harvest on conventionally and organically managed arable land with basically the same main objective. Capturing weed seeds during harvest is expected to reduce "weed pressure" on cropland in the medium to longer term. In the follow-up project BioDruschTec, this technique will be optimized. The scientific work of the further development of the technology takes place at the Technical University of Bingen and the University of Hohenheim and is implemented by a locksmith company from the Marburg area. The development of the technology takes into account population ecology data to be collected on the segetal vegetation and its dynamics under field conditions on organically managed arable land in the Lahn valley between Giessen and Marburg ('Marburg-Giessener Lahntal'). Further population ecological field surveys as well as field experiments with selected segetal populations will be conducted to evaluate the efficiency of the combine harvesting technique. Weed seeds for the field experiments will be obtained from a portion of the cropland included in the project. The corresponding scientific work is located at the Justus Liebig University iessen. Other project partners are the 'Wasser- und Bodenverband MarburgerLand' (WBV), organic farmers, and the Department of of Rural Areas and Consumer Protection of the Marburg-Biedenkopf county.