Kristian Thorup-Kristensen

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Professor in Crop Science

The main aims of my research are to study root growth and resource acquisition of crops, and to use this in the development of resource efficient cropping systems.

The study of crop root growth is made in field, semi-field and greenhouse studies, but with a clear focus on understanding and improving crop root growth under actual field conditions. We study many aspects of root growth but with a main focus on development of deep rooting and crop utilization of resources from deep soil layers.

In several crop root growth was studied using the minirhizotron method, and the interactions between root growth and soil nitrogen use were studied to 2.5m depth. But many other aspects of root growth have been studied, such as root competition in mixed plant stands, root modelling and the significance of crop root growth for the development of more sustainable farming systems, including organic farming.   

Root research in the field is always limited by laborious and non-precise methods, and therefore we work on developing new and better methods helping the study of deep root growth and activity.

Current main projects:

DeepFrontier, where we study very deep rooting of crops, to “understand and improve rooting in soil layers between 2 and 5 m depth”

RadiMax, where we, in cooperation with Danish plan breeding companies, work to include root traits into the selection criteria used when breeding new resource efficient crop cultivars. This work is done in close cooperation with the project FAUPE where we work to develop the screening methods.

RowCrop and OrganoFinery projects, where we study on different aspects of organic crop production. The overall aim is to make organic crop production more sustainable, in environmental as well as economic terms, by developing the opportunities for introducing more green manures and ley crops into the rotations.

Responsible for the MSc course “Crop production in a farming system perspective” and also teaching a lot at the BSc course “Afgrødelære (Crop science)”

Publication list: http://scholar.google.dk/citations?user=uvvd428AAAAJ&hl=en

Orcid profil: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5476-985X