When AI weeds the weeds
Fir to go, finger lime for tasting, VR glasses for the barn. In Hall 23a, federal offices and research institutions will be presenting their work - and coming up with some great ideas.
‘Douglas fir or silver fir?’ Svenja Gareis looks up briefly. ‘Douglas fir,’ says the man in front of her. She fills a small plant pot with soil, takes a feather-thin, perhaps 15-centimetre-high plant from a seed tray and places it in the box. ‘The Douglas fir needs a sunny location and enough space,’ explains Gareis as she walks past. ‘And it can only stand on the balcony for six months to a year, then it has to go into the garden or the forest.’ The tender little tree is then placed in a bag.
The new owner has a forest, he explains: ‘This Douglas fir will find a home in Baden-Württemberg - if it wants to grow there.’ Then a young family moves up from the queue and chooses their tree offspring. The ‘conifers to go’ at Grüne Woche come from the Thünen Institute of Forest Genetics, which played a key role in decoding the genome of the silver fir in 2019. Like the Douglas fir, the silver fir is considered a valuable tree species for making forests more resilient to climate change.
The beauty of tulip peppers
Here, in Hall 23a, the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) is not only present itself, but also offers numerous federal authorities and research institutions space to present their work - in a way that is also understandable for laypeople. The topics range from biodiversity and climate protection to fisheries and rural areas to animal husbandry and measures against food waste. Flower islands scattered around the hall show what chickpea plants, tulip peppers and volcanic asparagus look like.
An employee of the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food cuts slices of fruit at a shiny pyramid stand with exotic fruits. ‘We are responsible for the import control of fruit and vegetables at harbours and airports and have simply brought along what we are working on,’ she explains, handing over a tiny piece of finger lime. ‘It's also called vegan caviar because of its grainy texture. But it also has a similar price: 100 euros for a kilo.’
A few steps further on, you can put on VR goggles and explore a modern barn or find out how drones save fawns. On the other side, the Thünen Institute of Sea Fisheries has brought along raw crabs to draw attention to its research projects for the domestic crab fishery.
The labours of carrot cultivation
The test facility at TU Berlin, where Dr Sebastian Schröder is standing, is also illustrative: an elongated box with carrot plants, next to it a conveyor belt on which Schröder throws coin-sized plates marked by a laser. The ‘JaetRobi’ project aims to help with weed control in vegetable cultivation - with the help of image recognition and artificial intelligence (AI). ‘This is particularly urgent in organic farming,’ explains the scientist: ’With carrots, the weeds are weeded two or three times by hand. You have to find people to do that, and it's expensive.’ Instead, a field robot will recognise and destroy the weeds in future. Either by laser, which is still being researched, or mechanically - this is due to start in the summer.
