Hanna Sjulgård

My research is focused on crop production responses (both as yield and farm economy) to extreme weather conditions, and how soil quality, agricultural management practices and crop diversification help reduce crop production losses.

I am currently a postdoc in the Plant Ecology research group at the Department of Ecology (SLU). I am working in a FORMAS project where I for example investigates the impact of farm-level crop diversification on crop production in years with extreme weather conditions, how farms adapted their cropping systems after the extremely dry year 2018, and the impact on farm economy and inputs from having diverse crop rotations.

I have a PhD in soil science/agronomy from 2024 with the title "The potential of agricultural management to alleviate extreme weather impacts on Swedish crop production" from the Department of Soil and Environment. During my PhD, I worked with county-level analyses since the 1960s in Sweden regarding the spatiotemporal patterns of crop diversity and the impact of weather on crop yields. I also worked with on-farm research investigating interactions between agricultural management practices, soil health and crop yields, and assessed if satellite images could be used to assess winter wheat responses during drought and in turn impacts of soil properties.

Keller T, Etana A, Bösch Y, Hellstedt E, Larsbo M, Colombi T, Hosseinpour-Ashenaabad R, Sjulgård H, Arrázola-Vásquez E, Viketoft M, et al. (2027). Little impact of tillage system on crop yield and soil properties in a 43-years old field experiment on a clay soil in humid continental climate. Soil and Tillage Research. 265. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.still.2026.107403

Sjulgård H, Colombi T, Garland G, Coucheney E, Keller T. (2025). Agricultural practices that enhance soil structure improve crop yields of Swedish farms. European Journal of Agronomy 171, 127812. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eja.2025.127812

Sjulgård H, Graf LV, Colombi T, Hirte J, Keller T, Aasen H. (2025). Earth observation reveals reduced winter wheat growth and the importance of plant available water during drought. Biogeosciences. 22(5):1341–1354. https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-1341-2025 

Sjulgård H, Keller T, Garland G, Colombi T. (2023). Relationships between weather and yield anomalies vary with crop type and latitude in Sweden. Agricultural Systems. 211:103757. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2023.103757

Sjulgård H, Colombi T, Keller T. (2022). Spatiotemporal patterns of crop diversity reveal potential for diversification in Swedish agriculture. Agriculture Ecosystems & Environment. 336. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2022.108046

Sjulgård H, Iseskog D, Kirchgessner N, Bengough AG, Keller T, Colombi T. (2021). Reversible and irreversible root phenotypic plasticity under fluctuating soil physical conditions. Environmental and Experimental Botany. 188.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envexpbot.2021.104494