Otto Steineck

Otto Steineck (born May 29, 1920 in Zistersdorf , Lower Austria ; † August 25, 1990 in Vienna ) was an Austrian crop scientist .

Life

Otto Steineck, son of an administrator of an agricultural warehouse cooperative, attended the higher federal agricultural college in Wieselburg since 1938 . In 1940 he was called up for military service. A serious war injury resulted in permanent handicap. From 1943 to 1947 he studied agriculture at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna . Since 1948 he worked as a research assistant at the institute for plant cultivation and plant breeding at this university, which was headed by Ladislaus Michael Kopetz . In 1949 he received his doctorate with the dissertation " Contributions to the question of the hydroponic (soilless) culture of vegetables ". He then continued to work as an assistant at this institute and in 1954 acquired the Venia legendi for the subject of crop production with the publication " Boron Deficiency Damage in Potatoes " . In 1967 he was appointed as the successor to LM Kopetz as a full professor and director of the Institute for Plant Cultivation and Plant Breeding at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna. He worked here until his retirement in 1988.

In the first decade of his scientific activity, Steineck dealt particularly thoroughly with plant cultivation and plant breeding aspects of the potato. Building on the groundbreaking findings of his teacher Kopetz about photoperiodism , he found further connections about the photoperiodic behavior of potatoes and their tuber formation. He published the most important results and the effects on plant cultivation production technology in a 1956 article in the "Zeitschrift für Pflanzenzüchtung". Later he became increasingly concerned with questions of plant nutrition . With a newly developed technique of nutrient solution culture, he examined in particular the interaction between nitrogen and potassium.

Steineck had been editor since 1958 and editor-in-chief since 1968 of the magazine "Die Bodenkultur". In 1965 he received the Theodor Körner Prize for his scientific achievements . The Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Keszthely in Hungary awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1978.

Writings and essays (selection)

• New ways in potato growing (with LM Kopetz). Leopold Stocker Verlag , Graz u. Göttingen 1953; 2nd edition 1959.
• More alfalfa! . Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Vienna 1955.
• Day length and tuber formation in potato cultivars . In: Journal of Plant Breeding Vol. 36, 1956, pp. 197-213.
• Sprouting and root growth of various crops at constant supply increasing nutrients N and K . In: Die Bodenkultur Vol. 15, 1964, pp. 268–284.

literature

• G. Wunderlich: Professor Dr. Otto Steineck on his 50th birthday . In: Die Bodenkultur Vol. 21, 1970, before p. 111 (with picture).
• G. Storchschnabel: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Otto Steineck on his 60th birthday . In: Die Bodenkultur Vol. 31, 1980, before p. 109 (with picture).
• P. Ruckenbauer : In memoriam Otto Steineck . In: Die Bodenkultur Vol. 41, 1990, before p. 293 (with picture).