Lönnstorp

Annual cereal crops such as wheat, barley and rye have been cultivated for thousands of years for food and animal feed. They must be sown each growing season, often involving soil tillage, which can increase the risk of soil erosion and associated nutrient losses. To help reduce these impacts, researchers have worked for several decades to develop perennial grain crops through plant breeding and the domestication of wild species. Once established, these crops can produce grain for several consecutive years without needing to be resown.

This summer, as part of SITES AquaNet, lake mesocosm experiments at SITES stations Erken and Svartberget were set up to tes

Last week, SITES Lönnstorp Station began evaluating the field robot, FarmDroid, with help from Nordic Beet Research. FarmDroid is a solar-powered robot capable of both precision seeding and mechanical weed control using Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) GPS technology.

Over the past few months, significant investments have been made in new equipment to enhance the attractiveness of SITES Lönnstorp research station as a research infrastructure, while also improving efficiency and workplace safety.

Big things are happening at Lönnstorp Research Station! Renovation of the locker rooms and toilets began four weeks ago and is expected to be completed shortly after New Year. The upgraded facilities will include modern locker rooms for both men and women, along with an accessible toilet to improve comfort and accessibility for all visitors and staff.

These upgrades also mean we can finally retire the temporary locker room wagon that has supported us in recent years.

From November 10–12, the SITES Secretariat, Station Managers, Thematic Program Leads, and representatives from all SITES stations gathered in Umeå for a three-day meeting dedicated to collaboration, knowledge sharing, and strategic planning.

The meeting opened with updates from the nine SITES research stations, highlighting ongoing projects, recent developments, and future plans across the stations.

Recent graduate Kexin Guo from Lund University's Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science has successfully demonstrated how SITES Spectral data can power innovative machine learning solutions for ecological monitoring.

A new field experiment at SITES Lönnstorp Research Station is underway as part of the Formas-funded research project PriorBEE, exploring how different wild bee species contribute to strawberry pollination and fruit quality. 

PhD Candidate Alena Förster is one of the authors of the paper "Nematode community structure suggests perennial grain cropping cultivation as a nature-based solution for resilient agriculture". This study was conducted at SITES Lönnstorp Research Station during 2021-2022.

Dr. Hannah Ohm and Dr. Åsa Grimberg are two of the authors of the paper "Novel SNP markers for flowering and seed quality traits in faba bean (Vicia faba L.): characterization and GWAS of a diversity panel". This study was conducted at SITES Lönnstorp Research Station during 2021-2022.