dr. BM (Benedikt) Haug

My name is Benedikt Haug and as a researcher at Wageningen Plant Breeding I am investigating the role plant breeding can play in the transition to more biodiverse and resilient production systems. In the context of man-made climate change and biodiversity loss, and their detrimental effects on food production (which is in its current form also one of their major drivers), I am convinced that new production systems are necessary to mitigate and remedy these developments, along with adapted genotypes. In my research at FiBL (Switzerland) and INRAe (France) I found out that there is potential to breed superior pea genotypes for a pea-barley mixed cropping system. Generally research shows that production system that harbour a large amount of agro-biodiversity perform better than monocultures in terms of ecosystem services, such as yield (even though diversified systems require a different management paradigm with less dominance of what is happening in the agro-ecosystem but rather focussing on synergy effects). In my eyes the most promising future production systems and strategies will include 

• cultivar mixtures, 
• mixed cropping, 
• strip cropping, 
• agroforestry, and
• agrivoltaics.

My research focuses mainly on these systems. I want to leverage the potential that biodiversity-effects can bring in terms of resilience (yield stability, stable quality) and productivity (overyielding due to more effecient resource use) by investigating the breeding methodology and the traits needed to maximise these effects in diversified cropping systems. In my research I pay particular attention to the fact that plant genotypes grow embedded into a large interconnected soil-food-web to which they react to (and which they actively shape) differently depending on their genetic code.

Bio:

• Since 2024 Researcher at the Plant Breeding department of WUR
• 2022 - 2024 Lecturer at the Centre for Crop Systems Analysis and Plant Production systems (WUR)
• 2022 - 2022 Researcher at FiBL - Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, Switzerland (PROMISE project)
• 2017 - 2021 PhD thesis at FiBL - Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, Switzerland, and INRAE, France (ReMIX project)
• 2012 - 2017 Plant breeder (triticale) at Getreidezüchtung Peter Kunz, Switzerland
• 2006 - 2012 BSc Agricultural Biology and M.Sc. Crop Sciences at Hohenheim University, Germany, and at Umeå Plant Science Centre and SLU, Sweden

• Biosaat GmbH (29-8-2022/31-12-2099)