I’m an agronomist specialised in plant physiology and crop production with my primary research interest in the water balance of agro-ecosystems and how this interacts with the physiology of plants and the production of agricultural crops. Worldwide, agriculture consumes almost 75% of all fresh water withdrawals and irrigation makes an essential contribution to global food production. Consequently, how to manage and economize water resources in agriculture in order to preserve water for households, industry and environmental purposes is an essential question that is accentuated by climate change and the society’s vision for a bio-based green economy. 

I have done field experiments with a broad range of crops representative for Danish agriculture including energy crops. From these the Vandregnskab model for irrigation scheduling has been developed, which is probably the most popular Danish web-based decision support system for farmers. The experiments have delivered data for development of several modules and subroutines in the Daisy and the Danstress models, which in detail simulate crop water relations and balances. 

Some main questions during my years of research have been:

1. How is the yield potential affected by drought? Particularly, the regulation of assimilate partitioning by genes that encode invertases and the role of mono- and disaccharides during early embryogenesis.
2. How does soil physical factors affect the growth of root systems, how can water uptake by root systems be described quantitatively? How do roots signals mediate whole plant responses to soil moisture?
3. How can plants’ internal water balance as affected by soil water uptake and transpiration be modeled? How do hydraulic and chemical drought-stress signals interact?
4. The link between crop and leaf level photosynthesis/transpiration, and environmental conditions.