The collection of common reed is a living collection of Phragmites australis. It consists of more than 200 clones of different common reed populations from the whole world. Primarily, the collection is used for research, for example research concerning the influence of climate and climate changes on intraspecific variation, meaning differences within the same species.
Project Cindarella explores the possible use of plants as building material and as energy source in terms of biofuel and biomethane. The researchers have created a natural environment for swamp plants in order to investigate the plant productivity under different environmental conditions. For instance, exposures to wet lawn and to different nutrient supplies are tested.
Toxicrop is a research and innovation project funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme under Horizon 2020. An international consortium has joined efforts to investigate agricultural risk created by cyanotoxin occurrence in the 9 consortium member countries, and to access the fate of cyanotoxins in crops and crop contamination. Another aim of the project is to investigate and develop environment-friendly low-cost techniques for the removal of toxic cyanobacteria and cyanotoxins in order to eliminate health hazards and reuse water for productive purposes.
Scientific staff of WATEC Aarhus University Centre for Water Technology participate in the Toxicrop project. At the AU research facility Påskehøjgård they have set-up an experiment to assess the capacity of constructed wetlands for: 1) removal of cyanotoxins from polluted waters, and 2) removal of cyanobacteria by biochemical processes occurring in the interaction of water, vegetation, media and microorganisms.
