SITES agricultural research stations provide long-term agricultural crop experiments with projects linked to ecosystem services and environmental impacts on biodiversity, vegetation and phenology and aquatic eutrophication.
Several research projects at SITES Lönnstorp Research Station are connected to the Plant Protein Factory in Alnarp (e.g. GreenLeaFood and Green2Feed). By utilizing both facilities, agricultural researchers can explore how proteins and other components can be extracted from green plant parts. The projects aim to not only produce food and feed from green leaves, but also produce biogas and bio-fertilizer that can replace fossil fuels and chemical fertilizers.
The photo depicts an example of the collaboration, where green leaf biomass, alfalfa (Medicago sativa), is harvested from Lönnstorp fields and then sent to the plant protein factory for analysis.
Photo: Johannes Albertsson
The SITES 2024 Calendar theme is “SITES Collaborations”. SITES aims to promote excellent ecosystem research and high-quality data that support this research. This includes collaborations that increase the number of projects that utilize multiple SITES stations and connect between aquatic and terrestrial processes. Further, SITES aims to strengthen the collaborations with relevant research infrastructures and networks across Sweden and internationally, including data infrastructures and services. Each month during 2024, follow along as we highlight a unique SITES collaboration.