Switzerland: Research shows that mixed crops result in higher yields

According to a research project by ETH Zurich, mixed crops produce higher yields than monocultures. With optimized seeds and the use of the right machines, researchers believe that mixed crops are a real opportunity for farmers of the future. A research group led by Christian Schöb, a professor at ETH Zurich, has shown that in arable crop production, mixed crops actually produce much higher yields than monocultures. Their study was recently published in the journal Nature Plants. The researchers created two test gardens: one in Switzerland, on the Irchel campus of the University of Zurich, and the other in the Spanish province of Extremadura. The latter has a much drier and warmer climate than Zurich, so researchers were able to examine how plants grow under possible future climatic conditions. In their experiment, the researchers examined mixtures of two or four different plants selected from eight selected plant species, including wheat, oats, quinoa, lentils, lupine, flax and ...