In her Doctoral Thesis, Sara developed an agro-ecological modelling approach to compute locally-adapted growing periods of major crops relevant for global food production that impressed the jury. Her novel approach improves understanding of farmer's agronomic management decisions on a global scale, particularly covering the existing large knowledge gap on crop cultivar choice. Moreover, it allows to project adaptive changes under future climate scenarios and account for these in crop model simulations. With her research Sara shows that adjustments in cultivar selection and sowing dates can substantially alleviate negative impact due to increasing temperatures, as well as enhance the positive effects due to increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The thesis includes two publications in Global and Planetary Change and in Earth’s Future.
Chair of the Society of Friends and Promoters of PIK Manfred Stock highlighted especially the innovative modeling approach and outstanding publications of Sara Minoli's Thesis.
We would like to congratulate Sara with the honour of receiving this award and look forward to see more of her excellent research in the future!
