For International Women’s Day this week, we celebrate the significant strides made by LegumeLegacy in advancing sustainable agriculture and empowering female researchers in the field. LegumeLegacy, stands out for its aims to adapt existing mixed or ruminant based production systems by leveraging cutting-edge insights from ecology, agronomy, statistics, and related disciplines. The primary goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient inputs, and leaching, thereby lowering costs while simultaneously increasing carbon stocks, biodiversity, and yield stability.
Lead Coordinator of the project, Prof. Caroline Brophy (ADAPT, Trinity College Dublin) says:
It is a privilege to be the female lead of the LegumeLegacy Marie-Curie Doctoral Network that combines agriculture and statistics, both traditionally male dominated disciplines. Our newly formed international and multi-disciplinary team is already benefiting from gender balance with six female and five male PhD Researchers hired across the project.
LegumeLegacy is a doctoral network funded under the EU Horizon-MSCA-DN-2021 programme. The consortium consists of 21 principal investigators (PIs), 11 doctoral researchers (DRs), and one project manager. Together, they aim to optimise multiple benefits of grass, legume and herb mixtures in crop rotations to reduce the negative environmental impacts of modern agriculture.
This International Women’s Day, LegumeLegacy is proud to inspire inclusion by honouring the numerous women who lead and contribute to their initiatives:
Prof. Caroline Brophy, Lead Coordinator of LegumeLegacy
Valerie De Moor, Project Manager on LegumeLegacy
Die Hu, doctoral researcher enrolled at Trinity College Dublin. In her previous studies, Die developed linear mixed models and estimation methods for heritabilities in human traits, with the consideration of various genetic effects.
Sophia Philadelphi, doctoral researcher at the Institute of Landscape and Plant Ecology at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany. Her current PhD research, as part LegumeLegacy, aims to investigate the impact of multispecies grassland mixtures on the yield and quality of a subsequent cereal crop.
Julian Nyaga, doctoral researcher at the department of Agroecology at Aarhus University, Denmark. Her project aims to establish the nitrogen fixation rates in different grass-legume-herb mixtures and the impact of species diversity on nitrogen fluxes from the grassland stage to the follow-on crop, including a modelling approach.
Meret Kaspereit, doctoral researcher at Aarhus university in Denmark, aims to understand the dynamics of species shifts within mixtures, to optimise niche complementarity and enable a targeted design of multispecies grassland with continuously high yields and forage quality, as well as ecosystem service provision.
Female Principle Investigators working on this project include Dr. Nyncke Hoekstra, Prof. Petra Högy and Dr. Marie-Noëlle Thivierge.
The project will be hosting a training event in Switzerland the 15th to 19th of April organised by ETH Zürich and WBF-A. To learn more about this project, visit their website here: https://legumelegacy.scss.tcd.ie/
