DürreReSILIenz (drought resilience)

The increasingly frequent periods of drought caused by climate change require innovative, adapted cultivation systems in order to guarantee the quality and yield stability of our crops in the future. In addition to further developments in breeding, new agronomic measures must also be considered. A number of studies have shown that silicon (Si), an element that is not considered a plant nutrient, can improve the drought resistance of monocotyledonous crops such as cereals, maize or rice.

Most studies on the influence of silicon fertilization on the yield structure and quality of important cereals originate from Central Asia and are often based on container trials. There are hardly any comparable, practical (field) studies from Central Europe.

The aim of this EIP-Agri project is to investigate the benefits of Si fertilization for yield stabilization of winter wheat, silage maize and grassland under drought stress under Hessian growing conditions, to evaluate the potential benefits and to gather practical experience with Si fertilization.

To this end, the influence of various Si fertilizers at different fertilization levels on the yield and quality of the crops mentioned is being investigated in three-year precision trials at the sites operated by the Landesbetrieb Landwirtschaft Hessen (LLH) in Bad Hersfeld and Griesheim and at a site of the Justus Liebig University (JLU) in Groß-Gerau (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Overview of the treatments in the project DürreReSILIenz.

In the trial years 2025 and 2026, these plot-scale trials will be combined with trials on farmers' fields in southern Hesse (Figure 2) and container trials at the pot trial station of the Institute of Plant Nutrition in order to achieve meaningful and practice-relevant results on the potential of Si fertilization in Hesse.

Figure 2 Locations for the field- and pot trials in Hesse. JLU = Justus-Liebig-University, LLH = Landesbetrieb Landwirtschaft Hessen.