In Spring 2018, a maize field trial on different locations in these 9 countries will be set up as well.

Start of first winter wheat multi-location field trial! 12 institutes (15 in total including partner institutes) in 9 countries participate in ECOFE so far. 12 winter wheat varieties, one typical (“national”) cultivar per participating institutes are grown in the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Italy and Spain.

Meeting in Bonn, Germany, with ECOFE consortium to discuss first connected field trial network experiment. ECOFE outline page is drafted. Timelines, requirements and action plan is drawn up to initiate first multi-location field trial still this year.

Concept meeting of ECOFE network at the VIB – Ghent, Belgium with core group. Consortium of participating countries and institutes formed.

Following up on that discussion, Hartmut Stützel, Nicholas Brüggemann and Dirk Inzé wrote an article “The Future of Field Trials in Europe: Establishing a Network Beyond Bounderies” that appeared in Trends in Plant Science. This paper triggered a lot of positive response and interest from several institutes, demonstrating the willingness and need of European agricultural researchers to join in such an initiative.

In a meeting organized by Science Europe and the German Research Foundation (DFG), scientists from several European countries discussed the future of field experimentation in plant, crop and soil science. Participants agreed that for the scientific challenges ahead of us – climate change, productivity increase or sustainability of production systems, to mention just a few – field trial infrastructures that represent a large variation of soil and climatic factors, and that are equipped with state-of-the-art technology, are necessary.