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Molecular geneticist Altmann during an experiment with rape in the plant culture hall at the IPK in Gatersleben
Photo: Jens Gyarmaty / DER SPIEGEL
The plant culture hall in Gatersleben works like a space laboratory.
Strong lamps shine down from the ceiling like the sun on a brooding summer day.
Shimmering silver foil on the walls reflects the glistening light in all directions.
Thomas Altmann strolls to a dozen or so ripe rape plants that stand in boxes in the middle of the high room with their leaves hanging down.
The withered-looking plants are an excellent symbol of the real purpose of the hall.
"We can simulate the climate of the future here," says Altmann, Head of the Molecular Genetics Department at the Leibniz Institute for Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK).
Experts in this country expect more heat, more drought and more severe storms in the wake of climate change.
Thanks to the futuristic plant culture hall in the province of Saxony-Anhalt, researchers can find out what this could mean for farmers.
Climate change affects agriculture like hardly any other branch of the economy.
Rising temperatures, drought, changed vegetation seasons and extreme weather threaten and change crop production and livestock breeding worldwide.
At the same time, the agricultural sector causes around 12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
In Germany it is more than 8 percent, the consequences of animal feed imports, for example of soy from South America, are not counted.
Global warming and food security are directly related - via a mechanism that could plunge humanity into disaster.
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