February 2015
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. In practical terms, such an infrastructure could be created by networking of existing experiment stations.