Henrike Heinemann

Henrike Heinemann successfully defended her doctoral thesis entitled ‘Root-derived soil carbon inputs from different crop varieties’ at TU Braunschweig on 7 May 2025. The dissertation was written as part of the EJP-Soil project MaxRoot-C and supervised by Prof Dr Axel Don and Prof Dr Ing Magdalena Sut-Lohmann.

Ensuring food security through sustainable practices and simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions are key challenges for agriculture. Increasing soil carbon stocks in agroecosystems is being promoted as a climate protection measure that could provide an answer to the two aforementioned challenges. This could be achieved by utilising the genetic variability within a plant species to identify varieties with higher root biomass and thus higher carbon inputs. The aim of the work was to quantify the variability of below-ground biomass production within plant species and to investigate the relationship between above- and below-ground biomass production.

To this end, Henrike prepared a literature study and then set off with a small team on a big sampling tour throughout Europe - from Spain to Norway. The work focussed on different varieties of winter wheat and maize, which were sampled under a wide range of site conditions.

Henrike was able to identify significant differences between the varieties in root biomass, root-to-shoot ratio and grain yield for both winter wheat and maize. It was shown that the choice of variety can certainly lead to increased root biomass without reducing the yield. In general, it is important to consider the site conditions, as these have a significant influence on the development of root biomass.