Lore Kutschera

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Lore Kutschera

Lore Kutschera , née Belani; actually Eleonore Kutschera (born September 14, 1917 in Villach , Carinthia , † October 16, 2008 in Klagenfurt) was an Austrian botanist and internationally recognized root researcher. The monumental atlas volumes published by her on the morphology , anatomy , ecology and spatial distribution of roots in the soil are considered standard scientific works. Through her dedicated work into old age, she has given the interdisciplinary field of root research ( root ecology ) groundbreaking impulses. Under their aegis, the International Society of Root Research was founded in 1982 .

Life

Lore Belani, daughter of a structural engineer, attended grammar school in Villach and passed the matriculation examination in 1935 . In the same year she began studying agriculture at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna , which she successfully completed in 1939 when she graduated as a qualified engineer . She then worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Applied Plant Sociology in Villach. Here she supervised experiments to improve alpine pastures using plant sociological methods . In 1942 she married the graduate engineer Wilhelm Kutschera, who was declared missing as a soldier in the Second World War in 1945.

From 1945 to 1953 Lore Kutschera worked for the Carinthian provincial government , initially in the school service and from 1950 at the provincial planning office . Her task of monographically editing and mapping the area of ​​the Keutschacher Moor-Seental in Carinthia and drawing up an economic plan for this area was carried out with great commitment within three years. In 1953 she founded a private plant sociological institute in Klagenfurt and advised agricultural businesses. As part of this advisory activity, her scientific interest focused more and more on plant roots .

In 1953 Lore Kutschera was studying in the USA . At the University of Nebraska , she met the plant ecologist John Ernest Weaver , one of the most important root researchers of his time. From him and other botanists she received lasting suggestions for her own research. In the following years in Carinthia she used a special excavation technique to uncover the roots of many agricultural crops and weeds and document their spatial distribution in the soil depending on the location factors. As a result of these studies, her root atlas of Central European arable weeds and cultivated plants was published in 1960 , a handbook that established her scientific reputation as a root researcher.

Since 1961, Lore Kutschera has headed the newly founded Department of Botany and Plant Sociology at the Federal Institute for Alpine Agriculture in Gumpenstein near Irdning in the Styrian Ennstal. In 1962, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna awarded her a doctorate . 1969 habilitation they are at the Botanical Institute of the Academy with the work field companies Carinthia UPON location according arable and grassland management . In 1978 she was appointed associate professor . On December 31, 1982, she resigned from the state and university service. Since then, she has continued to be active in the field of root research, both physically and mentally.

Research and Teaching

In Gumpenstein, the focus of Lore Kutschera's scientific work was in the field of applied plant sociology , the core competence field of grassland theory . This also applied to her teaching activities at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna . On numerous excursions she got students and farmers excited about current plant-sociological questions. For her, applied plant sociology was primarily future-oriented ecosystem research that encompassed all areas of agriculture, landscape management and land use. She campaigned for environmental protection at an early stage and examined the harmful effects of air pollutants and improper application of liquid manure on the growth of grassland plants in several studies .

For Lore Kutschera, however, plant research was primarily root research, but always with a focus on the entire plant. This sub-area of ​​botany, which up until then had received little attention, became her actual scientific field of work after 1960. In Gumpenstein she found the institutional conditions for fundamental research work on the ecology, sociology, morphology and anatomy of plant roots. She offered several enthusiastic scientists the opportunity to work here. Her closest colleague was Erwin Lichtenegger , who made detailed fine line drawings of the root systems excavated in the field with artistic precision and from the second volume of the root atlas series also drew the above-ground parts of all exposed plants. Her long-time colleague Monika Sobotik , her future successor at the Gumpenstein Federal Institute, supported her with the anatomical root examinations .

Lore Kutschera, together with Erwin Lichtenegger and Monika Sobotik, has published all the important results of her research on plant roots in a monumental root atlas series. After her first work from 1960, the Root Atlas of Central European Grassland Plants was published in 1982 and two further volumes in 1992. The fifth volume followed in 1997 was the rooting of plants in different habitats and in 2002 the sixth volume was the root atlas of Central European forest trees and shrubs . In 2009, the seventh volume of this series will be the root atlas of cultivated plants in arable land in temperate areas with types of field vegetable cultivation .

These seven volumes with a detailed description of the investigation methods and techniques for producing the spatial and anatomical root images are considered to be unique documents in root research. This series of atlas has been repeatedly referred to in reviews as the “work of the century in root research”. Most of the volumes contain extensive directories with the most important publications in international root research. The articles published by Lore Kutschera in scientific journals are also indexed bibliographically in these volumes. Her experimental work to explain the geotropism of roots should be emphasized . Through observations of plant roots at locations in different climatic regions, but also through model experiments, she was able to prove that gravity, with the help of the water release and uptake controlled by it, causes the geotropic curvature growth of the roots.

In September 1982, at the end of her work at the Federal Agency for Alpine Agriculture in Gumpenstein, Lore Kutschera organized a root congress for several days in Irdning with strong international participation. On the last day of this congress, the International Society of Root Research was founded under her aegis in Klagenfurt and she was elected Vice President. In 1991 she organized the third world congress of this interdisciplinary specialist society in Vienna and published an extensive conference report.

Even in old age, Lore Kutschera still attended scientific conferences, undertook research trips and gave lectures. In the last few years she has mainly worked on the completion of the seventh volume of her root atlas series. She was a member of several botanical societies, for several decades also in the Society for Crop Science .

honors and awards

Major works

  • Lore Kutschera: Root Atlas of Central European Arable Weeds and Cultivated Plants (= 1st volume of the Root Atlas series). DLG-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1960.
  • Lore Kutschera: Successful agriculture through plant sociology. DLG-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1961.
  • Lore Kutschera: Carinthia's arable societies as the basis for arable and grassland management appropriate to the location. Federal Research Institute for Alpine Agriculture, Gumpenstein 1966.
  • Lore Kutschera: Root ecology and its use. A contribution to the study of the whole plant. International symposium from September 27 to 29, 1982 organized by the Federal Agency for Alpine Agriculture Gumpenstein. Edited by W. Böhm, L. Kutschera and E. Lichtenegger. Publishing house of the Federal Agency for Alpine Agriculture, Irdning 1983.
  • Lore Kutschera, Erwin Lichtenegger, Monika Sobotik: Root atlas of Central European grassland plants. Volume 1 Monocotyledoneae (= 2nd volume of the root atlas series). Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart / New York 1982.
  • Lore Kutschera, Erwin Lichtenegger, Monika Sobotik: Root atlas of Central European grassland plants. Volume 2. Pteridophyta and Dicotyledoneae (Magnoliopsida). Part 1 morphology, anatomy, ecology, distribution, sociology, economy (= 3rd volume of the root atlas series). Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart / Jena / New York 1992.
  • Lore Kutschera, Monika Sobotik, Erwin Lichtenegger: Root atlas of Central European grassland plants. Volume 2 Pteridophyta and Dicotyledoneae (Magnoliopsida). Part 2 anatomy (= 4th volume of the root atlas series). Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart / Jena / New York 1992.
  • Lore Kutschera: Root Ecology and its Practical Application. A Contribution to the Investigation of the Whole Plant 2 . Proceedings of the 3rd ISRR-Symposium of the International Society of Root Research, September 2-6, 1991 in Vienna (Austria). Edited by L. Kutschera, E. Hübl, E. Lichtenegger, H. Persson and M. Sobotik. Published by Association for Root Research, Klagenfurt 1992.
  • Lore Kutschera, Erwin Lichtenegger, Monika Sobotik, Dieter Haas: The root of the new organ. Their importance for the life of Weltwitschia mirabilis and other species of the Namib as well as species of neighboring areas. With explanation of the geotropic growth of plants. Self-published Plant Sociological Institute, Klagenfurt 1997.
  • Lore Kutschera, Monika Sobotik (general part), Erwin Lichtenegger with the collaboration of Lore Kutschera, Monika Sobotik and Dieter Haas (special part): Rooting of plants in different habitats (= Stapfia. Volume 49; 5th volume of the root atlas series). Published by the Upper Austria. Landesmuseum, Linz 1997.
  • Lore Kutschera, Erwin Lichtenegger: Root atlas of Central European forest trees and shrubs (= 6th volume of the root atlas series). Leopold Stocker Verlag, Graz / Stuttgart 2002.
  • Lore Kutschera, Erwin Lichtenegger: Lobau root station. Invitation to the root room. Published by Municipal Department 49 - Forestry Office and Agricultural Enterprise of the City of Vienna , Vienna 2005.
  • Lore Kutschera, Erwin Lichtenegger, Monika Sobotik: Root atlas of the cultivated plants of temperate areas with types of field vegetable cultivation (= 7th volume of the root atlas series). DLG-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009.

literature

  • Franz Speta : On the history of root research with special consideration of the activities in Austria. In: Stapfia. Edition 50, Linz 1997, pp. 257–261 (entire article pp. 7–288, PDF on ZOBODAT , including short biographies by Lore Kutschera, pp. 257–259, Erwin Lichtenegger, pp. 259–260, and Monika Sobotik, p . 260–261; with photos).
  • Franz Speta, Gerhard Aubrecht: Roots. Insights into hidden worlds (= Festschrift for the 80th birthday of Lore Kutschera). Catalog of the Upper Austria. State Museum, New Series 118, Linz 1997.
  • Karin Juergens, Mathilde Schmidt: Lore Kutschera. * September 14, 1917 in Villach, Austria. Root researcher and plant sociologist. In: Pioneers of Agriculture (= angelas series of publications. Volume 1). Edited by Heide Inhetveen and Mathilde Schmidt. CDC Heydorn Verlag Uetersen, 2000, pp. 112-115 (with picture).
  • U. Köpke: Obituary. Mrs. Univ. Prof. Dr. Lore Kutschera . In: News of the Society for Crop Science, November 2008 edition, p. 8.
  • Lore Kutschera †. In: Österreichischer Agrarverlag (Hrsg.): Forstzeitung. Volume 119, Issue 12, Vienna 2008, p. 43.
  • Monika Sobotik, Roland K. Eberwein: Univ.-Prof. DI Dr. Lore Kutschera (9/14/1917 - 10/16/2008). The root is (not) a strange thing! A life for root research. In: Carinthia II. Communications from the Natural Science Association for Carinthia. Volume 199 of the entire series = Volume 119 of Carinthia II. Part 1, Klagenfurt 2009, pp. 267–275 ( PDF on ZOBODAT , with picture and complete directory of their scientific publications).
  • Lore Kutschera. A life for root research. Edited and edited by Wolfgang Böhm . Auretim Verlag, Göttingen 2010 (with picture and list of publications).
  • Franz Speta: Kutschera-Mitter, Eleonore. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Life - work - work. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , pp. 432–436.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kutschera, lore
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kutschera, Eleonore (real name); Belani, Eleonore (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian botanist and root researcher
DATE OF BIRTH September 14, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Villach , Carinthia
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 2008
Place of death Klagenfurt