Complex projects

The project is aimed at solving the fundamental scientific problem of providing pharmaceutical raw materials to the pharmaceutical base of the North of Russia in general and the Republic of Karelia in particular.
The implementation of the concept of ecological and pharmaceutical safety of the country involves improving the existing system of agricultural technologies for growing medicinal plants by expanding the assortment of medicinal species grown in culture and developing technologies for their cultivation in the northern regions.
Currently, a small assortment of medicinal species is cultivated on small areas in the Altai and Stavropol Territories, the Crimea and some farms of the central chernozem region of the Russian Federation. However, the significant resource potential of economically significant northern native and introduced species is practically not involved.
At the same time, it is the use of certain types of medicinal plants adapted to the conditions of the North that is especially relevant in areas of risky agriculture, where low natural soil fertility is one of the limiting factors in the development of agricultural production.
To ensure highly effective management of the production potential of medicinal species, it is necessary to evaluate a number of physiological and chemical responses of plants to various soil indicators, the composition of poly and monocomponent crops, harvesting time. During the research, the features of growth, development, productivity of plant raw materials will be revealed. This project will assess the economic effectiveness of growing medicinal plant raw materials in depressed northern regions.
The project is interdisciplinary and interregional in nature. For the first time, a comprehensive assessment of the impact of various agricultural practices and soil conditions on the possibility of stimulating the physiological reserves and chemical composition of plants, and as a result, an increase in the overall productivity of medicinal plants and an increase in the profitability of production will be given. The new data obtained during the implementation of the project will be of both fundamental and applied nature.

The intensification of agricultural production is based on the application of new economically profitable methods and techniques that provide, among others, an increase in soil fertility. Currently, agricultural practices are being actively studied, allowing, on the one hand, to maintain a high level of soil fertility, and on the other, to reduce the cost of agricultural products. A wide range of substances is being considered and studied as a partial replacement for the application of high doses of fertilizers to the soil, but the question of the possibility of using sludge from the pulp and paper industry for these purposes remains open. The aim of this project is to assess the impact of the application of pulp and paper mill (PPM) sludge (lignosulfonate, mill activated sludge, primary sludge, coniferous bark) into soils of various types (mineral and peat) in various combinations and doses on the agrochemical and physical properties of the soil and, most importantly, on the yield of a wide range of cultivated plants in open and closed ground. It is expected that PPMsludge contributes to an increase in soil productivity and fertility through an increase in the content of organic matter, mineral nutrients, cation exchange capacity, changes in the structure, density, water-holding capacity, and other soil properties. Sludge-related improvement in soil properties is expected to have a positive impact on agricultural yields. Since yield largely depends on the physiological activity of photosynthesis, respiration, and water exchange of plants, the effect of waste on their ability to activate these processes and act as hormonal biostimulant of growth is important to study in this project. However, these hypothetical statements require confirmation, which are found or refuted during this study. Thus, for the first time, the role of PPM sludge in optimizing the physiological processes of plant growth and development is revealed indirectly through the effect on soil properties, or directly through hormonal and other biostimulation.

System research on social, environmental and economic processes at the White Sea and in its catchment (White Sea region) as part of Russia’s Arctic zone is carried out with the principal aim to assess the state of and changes in the economy and the White Sea ecosystem, and the opportunities for improving the conditions for the live of the human population.

Soil degradation is a relatively young science that has not yet covered the whole range of objects for observation, in particular, forest zone fallow lands involved in a process of postagrogenic restoration of vegetation and soil in active land management. Ambiguous estimations of carbon balance in Russia as well as huge changes in a land management system require the existing values of CO2 balance clarification especially in the European North soils and ecosystems where this issue has not been studied sufficiently enough. As a result there is a lack of research on various aspects of these lands activity in economy while sustainable agriculture ensuring. In this research a comprehensive study of chronoseries succession at post-agricultural lands is proposed by using a number of parameters that allow to evaluate carbon fluxes dynamics in biogeocenosis and that will give an idea of carbon fluxes in a succession series with subsequent economic efficiency calculation of the land management changes.
The research novelty lies in significant expansion of a scientific understanding of the current soil state in a post-anthropogenic ecosystem of the European North as well as factors determining carbon fluxes in succession series. The obtained data of complex studies allows improving economic assessment methods of land management based on interdisciplinary databases compilation and systematic approach implementation. The latter is based on a research complex which components are methods for estimating both rent’s size and structure taking into account transformational and transaction costs, discounted capital flow dynamics which is a function of not only costs, but also a barrier to (discount) rate. Developed institutional model is a basis for a new approach to both defining and implementing measures affecting land management in a context of sustainable soil management, its long-term productivity ensuring their functions sustainability.

A Russian-Swiss multi-disciplinary project