Long-Term Field Experiment: Data of 55 years now published for free reuse

ZALF pursues the open data strategy for research data and is pleased to announce first open access data publication of a long-term field experiment (LTFE) for free reuse: https://doi.org/10.20387/BonaRes-BSVY-R418

LTFE are essential research infrastructures for agricultural and soil sciences, in particular to reveal long term impacts such as through climate change or different management systems. Some LTFE run since a very long time; the start of the oldest still running LTFE in Germany was 1878. The Müncheberg "V140" LTFE was established in 1963 at the experimental site of the present Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) about 50 km east of Berlin. It represents one of the few still active long-term field experiments on sandy soil. The most common soil sub type is Haplic Luvisol. The experiment includes 21 treatments: 5 levels of mineral fertilization combined with 4 levels of organic fertilization and one control treatment. A relational database schema was developed for the experimental data in order to provide the data in a standardized format. The data set contains 32 parameters; among others: laboratory data of soil, plant samples, dates and application of sowing, fertilization and plant protection, used plant varieties and yield data. An essential prerequisite for the scientific reuse of LTFE data is the consistent use of national and international standards to describe the research data. Accordingly, parameters such as crop and variety, agricultural machines, methods and plant development stages have been standardized. In order to ensure the initial scientific exploitation of the research data by the data collectors (right of first use), the provision is delayed by a 9-year data embargo. Today data from 1963 to 2009 are available and will be extended annually. If more recent data are needed, please contact Dietmar Barkusky (author). Access to the data is provided by the BonaRes Data portal under the free license CC-BY. As part of the ongoing research project BonaRes ZALF has compiled information of as many as 200 former and ongoing LTFE in Germany for free access at https://b-web-e.bonares.de/uebersichtskarteDFV_en/.