Experimental drought is underway

At last, the rain shelters are deployed, and our experimental drought is underway.

This just happens to coincide with some of the finest Irish weather in decades, so we may have to irrigate the control plots!

This work is being undertaken by Eamon Haughey as part of his doctoral research. This same experiment is being repeated by our project partners at Agroscope (ART, Zurich, Switzerland). These experiments are part of the EU-funded AnimalChange experiment, in which we are testing the effects of severe weather events on grassland production, and the potential role of multi-species mixtures as a mitigation/adaptation measure.

 

 

 

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement n° 266018