Eckard Beer

Eckard Beer (born December 17, 1944 in Resehl, Naugard district ; † November 7, 2019 ) was a German phytomedicist . He was head of the plant protection department of the Lower Saxony Chamber of Agriculture , head of the Institute for Crop Production and Plant Protection (IPP) of the Weser-Ems Chamber of Agriculture and group leader for diseases in grain and maize in the German Phytomedical Society and was one of the pioneers of integrated pest management through the development of the Beer's 1% control threshold .

Live and act

Growing up on a farm, after the agricultural school in Hameln and the assistant examination to become a farmer, the engineering school or the engineering school for foreign agriculture in Witzenhausen and a job as a technical employee at Bayer AG .

From 1972 to 1975 Beer studied agricultural sciences at the Georg-August University in Göttingen, specializing in plant production. He completed his doctoral studies at the Institute for Plant Pathology and Plant Protection, where in 1979 he was awarded the degree of "Doctor of Agricultural Sciences". His dissertation with Professor Rudolf Heitefuß on the subject of determining the control thresholds and economic damage thresholds of monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous weeds in winter wheat and winter barley based on data from the official remedies examination had a very strong impact on his further work in plant protection.

After a short time as a scientific employee at the Institute for Plant Pathology and Plant Protection at the University of Göttingen, he moved to the Weser-Ems Chamber of Agriculture at the time to head the plant diseases and weeds department at the Plant Protection Office in Oldenburg. Beer later headed the Institute for Crop Production and Plant Protection and the Plant Protection Office of the LWK Weser-Ems and, until his retirement at the end of 2009, also the Plant Protection Office of the Lower Saxony Chamber of Agriculture, which was newly formed with the merger of the two Lower Saxony chambers of agriculture.

Beer's 1% control threshold, an easy-to-use method for the targeted use of fungicides against leaf and ear diseases in winter wheat, became known beyond Lower Saxony. In numerous regional tests, he demonstrated that a control threshold can also be used for varieties with different levels of resistance and that the cultivation of resistant varieties in combination with the use of fungicides according to control thresholds produces the highest adjusted additional yield.

The certainty that integrated pest management is both economically and ecologically a decisive instrument for the production of sufficient and high-quality food in practical agriculture ran like a red thread through his plant protection life. Dr. Beer was involved for many years in the German Phytomedical Society (DPG), where in 1989 he initiated the project group "Control thresholds for powdery mildew in winter wheat", which then became the project group "Control thresholds for fungal diseases in cereals" and finally the project group "Diseases in cereals and corn «. During this time, 45 field tests were carried out under his leadership, distributed across Germany, to review his control threshold concept. 39 trials could be evaluated and confirmed the thesis that it is consistently sufficient, not only for grain, to keep the top three leaf levels as healthy as possible.

With his retirement in 2009, Dr. Beer also returned from professional work, he passed away in 2019.

Web links

• Eckard Beer: Weed control and integrated pest management in arable field vegetables

literature

• Carolin von Kröcher: Obituary Dr. Eckard Beer in Phytomedicine, Announcements of the German Phytomedical Society eV 49th Volume No. 4 - 2019 page 7
• Hans Beer, Eckard Beer, Horst Bötger, Werner Garburg, Georg Meinert, Ehler Meyer: Weed control in integrated pest management : arable farming, field vegetables, grassland , DLG-Verlag; Edition: 5th, exp. u. verb. Ed. (1993)
• Eckard Beer: Federal Cross of Merit 1st class to Prof. em. Dr. Rudolf Heitefuss awarded. In: News sheet of the German Plant Protection Service. Vol. 58, 2006, pp. 91-92 (with picture).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dr. Eckard Beer at the German Agricultural Society (DLG)
2. ↑ Proplanta: Dr. Eckard Beer said goodbye to retirement