BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Agron.
Sec. Agroecological Cropping Systems
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fagro.2025.1570902
Cultivation of fiber nettle (Urtica dioica L.) in an agroforestry system for peat substitution in horticulture
Provisionally accepted
- Institute of Crop and Soil Science, Julius-Kuehn-Institute, Braunschweig, Berlin, Germany
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The German Federal Government aims to drastically reduce or even ban the use of peat in growing media in commercial horticulture by 2030. The joined project "Development and evaluation of peatreduced production systems in horticulture" (ToPGa) explores and evaluates the challenges and effects of the employment of peat substitutes for practical application. For this, a special focus is set on the evaluation of the renewable, locally grown resource fiber nettle (Urtica dioica L.) as a potential peat substituent. In this approach, three fiber nettle genotypes were established in an alley cropping agroforestry system. To evaluate the dependency of the nettle growth on genotype and distance to the tree line, nettle yield was determined over four consecutive years. The differences in yield between different genotypes were not significant in first three years of harvest. In general, genotype L18 showed a higher biomass yield as B13 and Z10. The yield of nettles growing 6 to 12 m from the tree line was significantly higher. We conclude that while all genotypes can tolerate the growing conditions close to the trees, nettle plants gain higher yields when grown further from the tree line with a maximum yield of 11.4 t ha-1 in the fifth year of cultivation. Retted nettle exhibits a low pH and minimal salinity. Nettles accumulate only low amounts of trace elements. Overall, chemical properties vary according to the season of harvest. Annual variations in retted material are not significant.
Keywords: agroforestry, Fiber nettle, yield, peat substituents, Fertilization, Trace Elements
Received: 04 Feb 2025; Accepted: 21 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lewerenz, Koltermann and Langhof. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Laura Lewerenz, Institute of Crop and Soil Science, Julius-Kuehn-Institute, Braunschweig, Berlin, Germany
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.