The Life Science Universities of Central and South Eastern Europe are the basis for sustainable, ecological and economic development of the region.
Session 1: Modern agriculture and rural development
Chairs:
Prof. Dl Dr. Dr.h.c. mult. Martin H. Gerzabek, BOKU, Austria
Prof. univ.dr. Florin Stănică, USAMV, Romania
Nine oral presentation and ten posters comprised this lively, and well received session. Pia Euteneuer released an excellent talk about the decomposition of sclerotia in soil, the impact of season and specifically earthworms – a finding by chance during a flood event. Otilia Bobis elucidated concepts and strategies to improve leave and fruit quality of mulberries for silk worm breeding, a significant economically sound activity for rural areas. Lucia Pop explained the complete value chain for silk production in Romania and focussed specifically on the re-establishment of mulberry tree plantations and the subsequent sericultural and silk technology. Michael Pillei elaborated the concept of an university network within CASEE, dedicated to continuous education in rural areas, the Academia Danubiana. The life science universities have the duty within their “third mission” to support and organize continuous education to foster the development and livelihood in the Danube region. The innovative approach involves the local stakeholder/communities in the development of customized educational programs. Florina Deleanu focussed also on the strengthening of local communities by re-introducing ornamental vegetable gardening as means of improvements in economy and communication of local communities. Ana Butcaru presented two excellent papers concerning roses for petal production. She established a complete organic cultivation system for roses from soil pre-treatment using different crops to get rid of e.g. nematodes, planting, raising the plants, biological plant protection to harvest and even frost protection. Nutritional-wise, dried petals should be used instead of cooked products. Val Stoian presented results from N-leaching studies following excess mineral nitrogen application under different crops as modified by soil texture. The oral session ended with flowers – a paper presented by Ioana Crişan about Iris germanica and the use of arbuscular mycorrhizal symbioses in different cultivars. In-depth research focussed on water use efficiency – varying considerable between cultivars, making them more or less suitable for dryer regions.
Very well made posters complemented the oral session. The authors presented the posters during the poster viewing session. The contributions covered a variety of additional topics, from fig and peach propagation, mays resistance breeding against fusarium, homemade fungizides, apple storage, challenges of recovering the drainage system in the Moldova River watershed to agrotourism and food products for athletes.
Overall, the session provided a basket of interesting and excellently presented topics showing the diversity of concepts, strategies and challenges to develop the rural area by agricultural activities.
Presentations:
