Launch of four FACCE – JPI projects
Since the beginning of this year, four projects have started as part of the "Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change" (FACCE – JPI), in which Swiss research groups are participating. In collaboration with international partners, the researchers are looking at greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.
The team led by Johan Six of ETH Zurich is searching for ways of optimising water usage in wet rice cultivation and achieving the best possible yields with minimum greenhouse gas emissions, taking into account the properties of the soil. The same team is also working on another project to develop "COMET-Global", a greenhouse gas accounting system. The web-based tool is intended to serve farmers on-site, where the relevant decisions on land usage are being made. Lutz Merbold’s research team at ETH Zurich is contributing to the improvement of models that estimate nitrous oxide emissions from soils used for agriculture. At the Agroscope research station, Jens Leifeld and his team are seeking to identify factors that control the emission of greenhouse gases from agricultural soils.
These four projects will run for three years and are funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation to the tune of CHF 620,000 in total. Their findings will be duly incorporated into the synthesis of the National Research Programme "Soil as a Resource" (NRP 68).