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Diversifying crop rotations with pulses enhances system productivity

Agriculture in rainfed dry areas is often challenged by inadequate water and nutrient supplies. Summerfallowing has been used to conserve rainwater and promote the release of nitrogen via the N mineralization of soil organic matter. However, summerfallowing leaves land without any crops planted for...

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Autores principales: Gan, Yantai, Hamel, Chantal, O’Donovan, John T., Cutforth, Herb, Zentner, Robert P., Campbell, Con A., Niu, Yining, Poppy, Lee
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4589733/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26424172
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep14625
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author Gan, Yantai
Hamel, Chantal
O’Donovan, John T.
Cutforth, Herb
Zentner, Robert P.
Campbell, Con A.
Niu, Yining
Poppy, Lee
author_facet Gan, Yantai
Hamel, Chantal
O’Donovan, John T.
Cutforth, Herb
Zentner, Robert P.
Campbell, Con A.
Niu, Yining
Poppy, Lee
author_sort Gan, Yantai
collection PubMed
description Agriculture in rainfed dry areas is often challenged by inadequate water and nutrient supplies. Summerfallowing has been used to conserve rainwater and promote the release of nitrogen via the N mineralization of soil organic matter. However, summerfallowing leaves land without any crops planted for one entire growing season, creating lost production opportunity. Additionally, summerfallowing has serious environmental consequences. It is unknown whether alternative systems can be developed to retain the beneficial features of summerfallowing with little or no environmental impact. Here, we show that diversifying cropping systems with pulse crops can enhance soil water conservation, improve soil N availability, and increase system productivity. A 3-yr cropping sequence study, repeated for five cycles in Saskatchewan from 2005 to 2011, shows that both pulse- and summerfallow-based systems enhances soil N availability, but the pulse system employs biological fixation of atmospheric N(2), whereas the summerfallow-system relies on ‘mining’ soil N with depleting soil organic matter. In a 3-yr cropping cycle, the pulse system increased total grain production by 35.5%, improved protein yield by 50.9%, and enhanced fertilizer-N use efficiency by 33.0% over the summerfallow system. Diversifying cropping systems with pulses can serve as an effective alternative to summerfallowing in rainfed dry areas.
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spelling pubmed-45897332015-10-13 Diversifying crop rotations with pulses enhances system productivity Gan, Yantai Hamel, Chantal O’Donovan, John T. Cutforth, Herb Zentner, Robert P. Campbell, Con A. Niu, Yining Poppy, Lee Sci Rep Article Agriculture in rainfed dry areas is often challenged by inadequate water and nutrient supplies. Summerfallowing has been used to conserve rainwater and promote the release of nitrogen via the N mineralization of soil organic matter. However, summerfallowing leaves land without any crops planted for one entire growing season, creating lost production opportunity. Additionally, summerfallowing has serious environmental consequences. It is unknown whether alternative systems can be developed to retain the beneficial features of summerfallowing with little or no environmental impact. Here, we show that diversifying cropping systems with pulse crops can enhance soil water conservation, improve soil N availability, and increase system productivity. A 3-yr cropping sequence study, repeated for five cycles in Saskatchewan from 2005 to 2011, shows that both pulse- and summerfallow-based systems enhances soil N availability, but the pulse system employs biological fixation of atmospheric N(2), whereas the summerfallow-system relies on ‘mining’ soil N with depleting soil organic matter. In a 3-yr cropping cycle, the pulse system increased total grain production by 35.5%, improved protein yield by 50.9%, and enhanced fertilizer-N use efficiency by 33.0% over the summerfallow system. Diversifying cropping systems with pulses can serve as an effective alternative to summerfallowing in rainfed dry areas. Nature Publishing Group 2015-10-01 /pmc/articles/PMC4589733/ /pubmed/26424172 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep14625 Text en Copyright © 2015, Macmillan Publishers Limited http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Gan, Yantai
Hamel, Chantal
O’Donovan, John T.
Cutforth, Herb
Zentner, Robert P.
Campbell, Con A.
Niu, Yining
Poppy, Lee
Diversifying crop rotations with pulses enhances system productivity
title Diversifying crop rotations with pulses enhances system productivity
title_full Diversifying crop rotations with pulses enhances system productivity
title_fullStr Diversifying crop rotations with pulses enhances system productivity
title_full_unstemmed Diversifying crop rotations with pulses enhances system productivity
title_short Diversifying crop rotations with pulses enhances system productivity
title_sort diversifying crop rotations with pulses enhances system productivity
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4589733/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26424172
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep14625
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