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Grocery shopping and nutrition after the lockdown: less eating-out and more price awareness Researchers at the University of Göttingen have been conducting a nationwide consumer survey since mid-April to find out how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting shopping, eating and cooking behaviour. In mid-June, at a time of low infection rates and increasing relaxation of pandemic-related restrictions in Germany, the same consumers were surveyed again. A comparison of the data shows partly a return to behaviour patterns back to the levels before the pandemic. People cooked less at home, but started to go shopping more frequently again. Other aspects remained stable, such as the increased importance of sustainability in food choices and the increased preference for regional agricultural produce. The results have been pub-lished in a discussion paper at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development at the University of Göttingen. more…

Schöninger spears – mankind’s earliest wooden weapons The Lower Saxony State Service for Cultural Heritage (NLD) and the University of Göttingen carry out research into the oldest wooden weapons that have ever been found. The project has been awarded a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) with funding of around €480,000. Over the next three years, an interdisciplinary team will use state-of-the-art imaging techniques to examine in detail the 300,000-year-old wooden objects from the internationally recognised Schöningen site in the Helmstedt district. more…

Reforestation can only partially restore tropical soils Tropical forest soils play a crucial role in providing vital ecosystem functions. They provide nutrients for plants, store carbon and regulate greenhouse gases, as well as storing and filtering water, and protection against erosion. Scientists at the University of Göttingen and the University of Minnesota in the USA have investigated how the properties and ecosystem functions of tropical soils change when forests are cut down, and whether reforestation can reverse such soil degradation. The results of the study are published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment. more…

Bumblebees benefit from faba bean cultivation About one third of the payments received by farmers are linked to specific “greening measures” to promote biodiversity. The cultivation of nitrogen-fixing legumes is very popular. However, these measures have been criticized because the benefits for biodiversity are unclear. Now a team from the University of Göttingen, the Julius Kühn Institute and the Thuenen Institute in Braunschweig has investigated whether the cultivation of the faba bean can support wild bees. more…

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