How “magic” seeds are supposed to save agriculture

Dusseldorf For farmer Jürgen Recht, 2022 was a bitter year. “Without water, nothing grows,” he says. The drought and heat throughout the summer left deep marks on his fields: the plants withered, the soil dried up deep down. Right puts the harvest losses of the Ermsleben agricultural cooperative in the Harz region, to which he belongs, at 30 percent.

It was the fourth year since 2018 with months of no rain and unusually high temperatures. For the plants in the fields in Germany, these are sometimes fatal shocks. They are not used to such a climate and there is practically nothing they can do about it.

Bauer Recht has no options for irrigation. For him, there is no question: “We will need new, more robust seeds that can cope better with the consequences of climate change.”

>> Read here: Parched like it hasn’t been in 70 years: how southern Europe wants to fight the drought