Elsa Lagerquist

I am an agronomist with a specialisation in crop and soil sciences. I graduated from SLU 2016. After graduation I worked for about a year at the Department of Soil and Environment at SLU, in the Soil Management group as a field assistent, doing variuos field and lab work, some data management and report writing. I started my PhD at the Department of Crop Production Ecology, and the group Agricultural Cropping Systems, at SLU during the summer of 2017, and joined my supervisor Göran Bergkvist on a project studying reduced tillage and cover crops in organic cereal based systems which I completed in December 2023.

In my PhD project, I have been studying intercropping of leguminous service crops and cereals as a way to get multiple services to the cropping system. The services in focus has been weed control and enhancement of the subsequent crop's yield. In Sweden, the short growing season makes it difficult to obtain sufficient amounts of biomass to get a positive effect of a service crop. We have made the period as long as possible by relay intercropping in both at sowing and at termination of the service crop. I have been working with six field experiments in southern Sweden, most of them on farmers' fields and the farmers have been taking part in the planning and evaluation of the experiments. I have used statistiscal methods, multivariate analysis and modelling to assess the effect of the cropping system.

My main interest is on deepening the knowledge on multifunctional cropping systems from an ecological perspective and how we can use cropping sytem design to integrate practises that promote soil fertility and an active soil life.

I am helping out with some of the Department's teaching, both on Bachelor and Master level. I have supervised a handful of group projects and co-supervised one MS thesis. I have also been the supervisor of four interns.

In the project I joined for my PhD we cooperated with Hushållningssällskapet, an advisory service company, a group of farmers and a machine developer. In the new projects I work with other partners, SLU RådNu and MiljöMatematik, as well as farmers.

I really enjoy working with other stakeholders and close to the practise, to see the practical implementation and make sure we work on issuses of importance.

PhD in Crop Production Science 2023

MS in Biology SLU 2016

Agronomy diploma SLU 2016

BS in Biology SLU 2014

Lagerquist, E., Vogeler, I., Kumar, U., Bergkvist, G., Lana, M., Watson, C.A., Parsons, D. 2024. Assessing the effect of intercropped leguminous service crops on main crops and soil processes using APSIM NG. Agricultural Systems. 216:103884. ISSN 0308-521X. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2024.103884 

Leguminous service crops in cereal production at high latitudes : provision of ecosystem services and disservices from a novel intercropping system - PhD thesis
Leguminous service crops in cereal production at high latitudes : provision of ecosystem services and disservices from a novel intercropping system (slu.se)

Lagerquist E.*, Menegat A., Dahlin A.S., Parsons D., Watson C., Ståhl P., Gunnarsson A., Bergkvist G. (2022). Temporal and Spatial Positioning of Service Crops in Cereals Affects Yield and Weed Control. Agriculture, 12(9), 1398. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture12091398