Bio-interactions and biodiversity
This research field focuses on the causes and consequences of biodiversity. Increasing our capacity to document and understand the value of, and threats to biodiversity (e.g. changing land use and climate change) and developing scientifically sound incentives to promote sustainable forms of biodiversity use, are two major challenges emanating from the Convention on Biological Diversity. In the past, incentives to conserve biodiversity were primarily related to ethical issues while more recently the awareness that biodiversity constitutes a species pool with related ecosystem services to be maintained for human well-being has increased. History, the genetic background, intra- and interspecific interactions and the abiotic environment are considered main drivers of biodiversity. Although these main drivers are recognized, much remains unclear about their actual role and interactions, which eventually have led to current biodiversity distribution.
Understanding and predicting the responses and interactions of individual
organisms, communities, and (natural and agro-)ecosystems to biotic and abiotic
stress is a great challenge for biology in the 21st century.
Scientific research concerning the understanding and valuing of biodiversity is
crucial for the development of strategies to counter the threats to
biodiversity. Moreover, this insight may lead to the development of
science-based guidelines for making ecosystem management decisions, which take
into account biodiversity at different levels of integration in space and time
in natural and agro-ecosystems. Main research areas are:
Intra- and interspecific interactions and the function of biodiversity in (agro)-ecosystems.
The underlying evolutionary mechanisms of biodiversity.
Quality of production and products
Understanding the genetic, physiological and environmental processes that govern
plant growth and development during pre- and post-harvest is key to optimizing
the processes that lead to high-quality produce. To this end, we need to unravel
the complexity of interactions at the plant, plot or field level. Systems under
study range from extensive low-tech production systems to very intensive and
technologically innovative production systems in greenhouse horticulture. They
encompass depleted and degraded systems, often found in tropical regions,
compared with those in Asia (China, Japan), North America and Europe that are
often overloaded with pesticides and nutrients due to excessive inputs of
fertilizer and manure. Main research areas are:
Linking quality of soil and produce to human and ecosystem health
High-tech innovations to improve both quality of production and product quality
Genes underlying complex quality properties in soil-plant systems
Sustainable use of land and its resources
This research field focuses on productive and multifunctional land use in rural areas aiming at sustainable
ecosystem services in a world where land-use systems are threatened because of
habitat conversion, soil erosion, over-grazing and -harvesting, introduction of
alien species, changes in water availability, altered fire regimes and climate
change. It includes research on the adaptive capacity of (agro-)ecosystems, the
restoration of degraded lands, and the integrated management of natural
resources. The research synthesises the results from studies in PE&RC from field
scales up to global land use scales. Sustainability indicators at lower scale
levels (plant, field), such as efficiency of input use, soil organic matter
status, nutrient balances and biodiversity are used to understand changes and
trajectories at higher scales (farm, watershed). Insight in sustainable use of
natural resources (land, water, nutrients, biodiversity) and dealing with
competing claims on these resources are central for livelihood development and,
in many areas of the world, poverty alleviation. To tackle these complex issues,
main elements of PE&RC come to the forefront, such as the unifying systems
approach, an integrated approach of production and conservation systems, and
making sustainability operational, including the societal context. In
cooperation with groups from the social sciences, the current PE&RC systems
approach evolves from a purely eco-centric towards a more holistic paradigm.
Main research areas are:
Adaptive capacity of production and conservation systems
Restoration ecology and the
rehabilitation of degraded land
Integrated resource management
Emerging properties: scaling and integration in ecology
The spatial scales of research in PE&RC range from the sub-individual level (i.e genotyping, transcriptomics and physiology), via the organismal level (i.e. individual plants or pests and diseases), population, community, regional/ecological zone to global land use (see figure). Understanding the interactions within and between these different spatial scales, taking the temporal sales and related variability into account, is vital for understanding ecosystem dynamics and functioning. One of the major challenges in ecological research is the understanding of complete ecosystems in terms of their key components and their mutual interactions in time and space. The development of concepts and methodologies for description, analysis and understanding of (agro-)ecosystems dynamics in time and space is one of the main goals of this research. This is done via a systems approach, linking the individual components to an integrated, dynamic representation of coupled processes at various scales.
Moreover, this research field also addresses the applicability of PE&RC expertise regarding data and modelling in systems ecology at plant and sub-plant levels. Within PE&RC, this research field has a strong methodological and technological backbone focusing on, e.g., a theoretical framework enabling upscaling between different scale levels, and optimal management strategies.
Figure: scales within PE&RC