2 Conditions, under which the project was accomplished

The time conditions for the tree investigations were estimated as very scarce, because long pre-cultivation periods of the plant material was necessary, in particular if several years old trees with the characteristics of adult plants should be used.

For the performance of the project, one scientist and 1.5 technical woman employees were available.

TNT-tolerant clones of willows (Salix) and poplars (Populus) were obtained from a forerunner project (Schoenmuth 1996 [ # Lit. 5 ]) . The selected hybrid clones had proven TNT/ADNT uptake and degradation ability in greenhouse experiments.

The pre- propagation of these tree hybrids was performed during the request phase (see fig.1 and fig.3). Other trees, like birch (Betula pendula), Norway spruce (Picea abies), Canadian white spruce (Picea glauca) and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) were obtained from local tree nurseries.

The infrastructure of The Institute for Ecotoxicology and Ecochemistry in Plant Protection of the Federal Biological Centre for Agriculture and Forestry could be used, as already described in the project request in 1997 [ # Lit. 6 ]. This concerned above all fields areas for tree nurseries and for yield testing, lysimeter pots for outdoor exposure tests with TNT-soils and 1-m³-lysimeter, the radio-analytic laboratories and the laboratories for residue analytics, heavy metal and element analyses.

last updated: 18.02.04 19:41 by Bernd Schoenmuth Web date: June 2002