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Long-term experiments (LTEs) are valuable resources to assess the sustainability and resilience of agricultural practices and systems.

This conference will focus on using LTEs to meet current and future challenges in agriculture. We will explore how LTEs are advancing agronomy, agroecology, soil science, crop science and statistics to underpin farming systems that support nutritious diets while safeguarding our environment.

A key focus will be collaboration between LTEs around the world, including how new metadata platforms (such as the Global Long Term Experiment Network) and new statistical approaches enable data to be combined to answer questions pertinent to the Sustainability Development Goals.

This event allows delegates to present on-site or online to maximise the global engagement. The meeting includes oral presentations, a poster session, workshops, a visit to the Rothamsted Long-Term Experiments, and an optional conference dinner.

The conference will celebrate the 180th anniversary of the Broadbalk Winter Wheat experiment. Broadbalk is the world’s oldest field experiment, and was established in 1843 to investigate the relative importance of different plant nutrients. Today, it helps to answer questions about how farming practices, inputs, and weather patterns affect crop production.

 

Event Sessions

- Multi-LTE analysis (methods for joint analysis of datasets from multiple LTEs to answer novel questions)

- Design and data analysis (making the most of LTEs via clever design and analysis strategies)

- New tools and sensors (new technologies and methods to capture new data)

- Soil health (including C, nutrient management, and microbial activity)

- Climate (assessing impacts of climate change and exploring adaptation and mitigation strategies)

- Farm systems for the future (lessons from LTEs for designing future farming systems)

- Nutrition from the ground up (links between soil, plant, animal, and human nutrition)

 

The program includes:

Workshops on:

- Adapting LTEs to answer key challenges

- Data management for analysis including:

     > Data management for meta-analysis: Richard Ostler

     > Statistical approaches: Andrew Mead

Field visits to Rothamsted’s long-term experiments and sample archives

 

April 12th update: The draft meeting schedule is now available to download below. We will also host 100+ poster presentations!

The meeting begins at 9am on June 20th and will end at 4pm on June 22nd.

 

Visit the EVENT WEBSITE for more details

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Agriculture now generates vast amounts of data of different types and at different scales. The ownership, access, control, sharing, value, permissioning, intergration, security, safeguarding and sovereignty of this data represent multiple challenges and opportunities for the sector.

Farm-centric research generally involves On-Farm Experimentation and may be better described as 'Farm Action Research', i.e. research conducted at least in part by and for beneficiaries who also farm. 

Rothamsted Research is a world-leading, non-profit research centre that focuses on strategic agricultural science to the benefit of farmers and society worldwide.

On Farm Experimentation (OFE) is increasingly being recognised as having transformative power in improving performance in agricultural systems across the world.

AAB are a learned society and charity focused across many areas of Applied Biology.

Many of the most telling innovations that make a difference on-farm come from farmers themselves, or from close collaboration between farmers, advisors, industry and researchers