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Cover crops support ecological intensification of arable cropping systems
A major challenge for agriculture is to enhance productivity with minimum impact on the environment. Several studies indicate that cover crops could replace anthropogenic inputs and enhance crop productivity. However, so far, it is unclear if cover crop effects vary between different cropping system...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5291223/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28157197 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep41911 |
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author | Wittwer, Raphaël A. Dorn, Brigitte Jossi, Werner van der Heijden, Marcel G. A. |
author_facet | Wittwer, Raphaël A. Dorn, Brigitte Jossi, Werner van der Heijden, Marcel G. A. |
author_sort | Wittwer, Raphaël A. |
collection | PubMed |
description | A major challenge for agriculture is to enhance productivity with minimum impact on the environment. Several studies indicate that cover crops could replace anthropogenic inputs and enhance crop productivity. However, so far, it is unclear if cover crop effects vary between different cropping systems, and direct comparisons among major arable production systems are rare. Here we compared the short-term effects of various cover crops on crop yield, nitrogen uptake, and weed infestation in four arable production systems (conventional cropping with intensive tillage and no-tillage; organic cropping with intensive tillage and reduced tillage). We hypothesized that cover cropping effects increase with decreasing management intensity. Our study demonstrated that cover crop effects on crop yield were highest in the organic system with reduced tillage (+24%), intermediate in the organic system with tillage (+13%) and in the conventional system with no tillage (+8%) and lowest in the conventional system with tillage (+2%). Our results indicate that cover crops are essential to maintaining a certain yield level when soil tillage intensity is reduced (e.g. under conservation agriculture), or when production is converted to organic agriculture. Thus, the inclusion of cover crops provides additional opportunities to increase the yield of lower intensity production systems and contribute to ecological intensification. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5291223 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-52912232017-02-07 Cover crops support ecological intensification of arable cropping systems Wittwer, Raphaël A. Dorn, Brigitte Jossi, Werner van der Heijden, Marcel G. A. Sci Rep Article A major challenge for agriculture is to enhance productivity with minimum impact on the environment. Several studies indicate that cover crops could replace anthropogenic inputs and enhance crop productivity. However, so far, it is unclear if cover crop effects vary between different cropping systems, and direct comparisons among major arable production systems are rare. Here we compared the short-term effects of various cover crops on crop yield, nitrogen uptake, and weed infestation in four arable production systems (conventional cropping with intensive tillage and no-tillage; organic cropping with intensive tillage and reduced tillage). We hypothesized that cover cropping effects increase with decreasing management intensity. Our study demonstrated that cover crop effects on crop yield were highest in the organic system with reduced tillage (+24%), intermediate in the organic system with tillage (+13%) and in the conventional system with no tillage (+8%) and lowest in the conventional system with tillage (+2%). Our results indicate that cover crops are essential to maintaining a certain yield level when soil tillage intensity is reduced (e.g. under conservation agriculture), or when production is converted to organic agriculture. Thus, the inclusion of cover crops provides additional opportunities to increase the yield of lower intensity production systems and contribute to ecological intensification. Nature Publishing Group 2017-02-03 /pmc/articles/PMC5291223/ /pubmed/28157197 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep41911 Text en Copyright © 2017, The Author(s) 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 Wittwer, Raphaël A. Dorn, Brigitte Jossi, Werner van der Heijden, Marcel G. A. Cover crops support ecological intensification of arable cropping systems |
title | Cover crops support ecological intensification of arable cropping systems |
title_full | Cover crops support ecological intensification of arable cropping systems |
title_fullStr | Cover crops support ecological intensification of arable cropping systems |
title_full_unstemmed | Cover crops support ecological intensification of arable cropping systems |
title_short | Cover crops support ecological intensification of arable cropping systems |
title_sort | cover crops support ecological intensification of arable cropping systems |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5291223/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28157197 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep41911 |
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