Dr GOETZ RICHTER

BIOGRAPHY

Goetz’s key interest is the interaction of agriculture and the environment. In particular, he is interested in the biophysical constraints to crop growth and their importance for phenotype/trait selection and cropping system design in target environments. Originally focusing on arable systems, his work expanded to perennial systems, covering herbaceous and woody crops, laying the foundations for a whole systems analysis in the bioeconomy. His keen interest in upscaling has recently widened to applications of remote sensing. Goetz is an agricultural scientist with a focus on soil-crop-environment interactions and 30 years’ modelling experience, optimising cropping systems for impacts and climate change mitigation. Founded in the “de Wit school of thought” of production ecology and soil science, his approach marries evidence with the development of deterministic, empirical and stochastic modelling tools. His expertise covers soil processes and crop growth under physical and biogeochemical constraints, on scales ranging from individual plants to the field, catchment and region, quantifying genotype-environmental-management interactions. Recent outstanding results include a new process-based model to identify and assess key traits for willow genotypes grown for bioenergy; the effect of genotypic variation of Miscanthus root distribution on carbon sequestration was assessed; and Miscanthus productivity and yield gap were verified.