|
Project properties |
|
| Title | Matchmaking for crops |
| Group | Farming Systems Ecology |
| Project type | thesis |
| Credits | 18 |
| Supervisor(s) | Dr. Annet Westhoek, FSE |
| Examiner(s) | |
| Contact info | annet.westhoek@wur.nl |
| Begin date | 2019/04/01 |
| End date | 2020/04/30 |
| Description | The realization that the current species poor agricultural systems lead to a variety of problems, both on and off the field, has led to an increased interest in diversifying cropping systems by growing two or more crops concurrently in the same field. But given the huge number of possible crop combinations, and the variety of ways in which plants may interact, how can we know which crops should be grown together?
In this project, you will do an extensive literature review to gather information on crop combinations. The focus is on European vegetable crops, and the effort may be concentrated on one or two crops of your interest. This information will then be combined with an extensive crop trait database (already collated), using advanced statistical techniques (e.g. naive Bayesian classification). The aim would be to find out which (set of) traits make a crop a good companion to a crop of interest. The project offers you a chance to contribute to scientific research which combines different types of data to address questions which are of real interest to vegetable growers. You will receive appropriate guidance, especially with regard to the data analysis, and no special prior knowledge on that front is assumed. If the project is conducted during the field season, you may also be invited to join field work activities. |
| Used skills | Literature search and critical reflection in literature, statistical analyses less commonly encountered. Programming in R. |
| Requirements | |