SUSTAINABLE RYE PRODUCTION IN THE WESTSIK CROP ROTATION EXPERIMENT

2000 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Lazányi

The best-known and most remarkable example of continuous production in Hungary is the Westsik crop rotation experiment established in 1929. It is still in use to study the effects of organic manure treatment, to develop models and to predict the likely effects of different cropping systems on soil properties and crop yields. In this respect, the Westsik crop rotation experiment provides data of immediate value to farmers concerning the application of green manure, straw and farmyard manure. The increased demand for food and changes in the ecological requirements of agricultural production have urged scientists to revise the widely used traditional principles and to develop alternative crop production practices. In this respect, they must strive for the adoption of technologies which serve for the simultaneous maintenance of production levels, soil fertility and environmental goals. The Westsik crop rotation experiment provides useful help and a thorough scientific basis for the solution of this problem. It models various possible methods of nutrient management and assists in answering questions on the sustainability of agricultural production. Since 1929, only minor changes have been introduced in some treatments. These changes have made the classical experiment more relevant to current research needs and farming practices.

2001 ◽  
pp. 34-39
Author(s):  
János Lazányi

The crop rotation experiment, established by Vilmos Westsik in 1929, is the best known and most remarkable example of continuous production in Hungary. It is still used to study the effects of organic manure treatment, develop models and predict the likely effects of different cropping systems on soil properties and crop yields. Westsik’s crop rotation experiment provides data of immediate value to farmers concerning the applications of fertilisers, green, straw and farmyard manure. The experiment also provides a resource of yield, plant and soil data sets for scientific research into the soil and plant processes which control soil fertility, and into the sustainability of production without environmental deterioration. The maintenance of Westsik’s crop rotation experiment can be used to illustrate the value of long-term field experiments.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amare Aleminew ◽  
Melkamu Alemayehu

Soil is a non-renewable or finite resource and is the bank of nutrients for plant growth. Most soils in the tropical region including Ethiopia are highly weathered and infertile due to lower organic matter content and open nutrient cycling systems. These led to soil fertility depletion and crop productivity reduction in the country by different soil degradation agents. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to review soil fertility depletions and its management options under crop production perspectives in Ethiopia. The major drivers of soil fertility depletion are population pressure, land use pattern, free grazing of animals, lack of energy sources, land ownership and poor government policy problems. The major causes of soil fertility depletion are inadequate fertilizer use, complete removal of crop residues, continuous cropping systems, climate and soil types, lack of proper cropping systems and soil erosion and continuous cultivation. The promising technologies for improving soil fertility are integrated nutrient management, crop residue management, green manuring and cropping sequences, management of farmyard manure, applications of chemical fertilizers and soil amendments, agroforestry practices, applying conservation agriculture and application of soil-water conservation practices. Therefore, it needs a great attention by the community and the government to use innovative soil fertility management options to sustain soil fertility and crop productivity for the coming generations in the country forever enhancing nutrient input and recycling through following closed nutrient management systems in the cultivated lands.


1987 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 166-168
Author(s):  
P. S. Hammes

Crop production is based on the photosynthetic process. Effective cropping systems are only attainable by optimising the size, active duration and effectivity of the photosynthesizing leaf canopy in the field. The extent of photosynthesis on a farm scale is impressive. A typical maize crop on one hectare of land utilises approximately 20 t. carbon dioxide, which is recovered from as much as 60 000 t. of air. Even highly productive cropping systems convert available radiation from the sun into chemical energy with an efficiency of less than 5%. Dramatic increases in crop yields may be attained in future, as has been the case in the past, as the process of photosynthesis is exploited with increasing skill.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathalie Colbach ◽  
Sandrine Petit ◽  
Bruno Chauvel ◽  
Violaine Deytieux ◽  
Martin Lechenet ◽  
...  

The growing recognition of the environmental and health issues associated to pesticide use requires to investigate how to manage weeds with less or no herbicides in arable farming while maintaining crop productivity. The questions of weed harmfulness, herbicide efficacy, the effects of herbicide use on crop yields, and the effect of reducing herbicides on crop production have been addressed over the years but results and interpretations often appear contradictory. In this paper, we critically analyze studies that have focused on the herbicide use, weeds and crop yield nexus. We identified many inconsistencies in the published results and demonstrate that these often stem from differences in the methodologies used and in the choice of the conceptual model that links the three items. Our main findings are: (1) although our review confirms that herbicide reduction increases weed infestation if not compensated by other cultural techniques, there are many shortcomings in the different methods used to assess the impact of weeds on crop production; (2) Reducing herbicide use rarely results in increased crop yield loss due to weeds if farmers compensate low herbicide use by other efficient cultural practices; (3) There is a need for comprehensive studies describing the effect of cropping systems on crop production that explicitly include weeds and disentangle the impact of herbicides from the effect of other practices on weeds and on crop production. We propose a framework that presents all the links and feed-backs that must be considered when analyzing the herbicide-weed-crop yield nexus. We then provide a number of methodological recommendations for future studies. We conclude that, since weeds are causing yield loss, reduced herbicide use and maintained crop productivity necessarily requires a redesign of cropping systems. These new systems should include both agronomic and biodiversity-based levers acting in concert to deliver sustainable weed management.


Agronomy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 1503
Author(s):  
Nasser Al-Suhaibani ◽  
Mostafa Selim ◽  
Ali Alderfasi ◽  
Salah El-Hendawy

The primary goal of integrated nutrient management (INM) strategies is to substitute a portion of chemical fertilizers with a more sustainable and environmentally safe organic compost in order to mitigate soil degradation, improve crop production, and protect the environment. Therefore, the present study was conducted to assess the impacts of different INM practices, namely full-dose NPK (T1), compost of cow manure at 5 t ha−1 (T2), compost of poultry manure at 5 t ha−1 (T3), compost of mixed sheep and camel manure at 5 t ha−1 (T4), 50% NPK combined with the mixture of the three types of composts at the rate of 5 t ha−1 (T5) or 10 t ha−1 (T6), and mixture of the three types of composts at the rate of 10 t ha−1 (T7), 15 t ha−1 (T8), or 20 t ha−1 (T9) with or without biofertilizers for each treatment on several physiochemical and biological proprieties of soil and final grain yield of field crops after 2 years of field-scale experiments. The results showed that all INM practices generally significantly (p < 0.05) improved the initial values of all tested soil physiochemical and biological proprieties, whereas improvement was more prominent for the plots treated with T5–T9, compared with those treated with T1–T4. Seed inoculation with biofertilizers also significantly (p < 0.05) increased different soil proprieties by 2.8–12.0%, compared to that of the non-inoculation treatment. Principal component analysis revealed that most soil chemical properties were closely associated with T5–T6 treatments, while most soil physical and biological properties appeared to be more related to T7–T9 treatments. Our results indicated that recycling agricultural wastes into new productive composts and integrating it into appropriate INM practices as shown in T5–T9 treatments may induce favorable changes in soil properties and improve crop production under arid conditions even in the short term.


2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Alan J Schlegel ◽  
Yared Assefa ◽  
Daniel O’Brien

Abstract. Selection of optimal crops and cropping systems for most efficient water use specific for local environments can improve global water security. Limited irrigation with ground water is one alternative to alleviate crops from low amount or unevenly distributed water in the growing seasons in semi-arid regions. The main objectives of this research were to quantify yield-water use relationships of three limited irrigated crops, determine effect of crop selection on profitability with limited irrigation, and identify profitable and alternative crop production systems. A field study was conducted at the Kansas State University Southwest Research-Extension Center near Tribune, Kansas, from 2012 through 2017. There were four treatments in the study, two 1-yr systems of continuous corn ( L.) (C-C) and continuous grain sorghum (L.) (GS-GS) and two 2-yr rotations of corn-grain sorghum (C-GS) and corn-winter wheat ( L.) (C-W). Overall corn yield after wheat (C-W) was about 1.4 Mg (ha)-1 greater than C-C. Corn and sorghum yields were similar grown as monoculture or in rotation with each other. Available soil water at corn planting and during the growing season were 20 to 40 mm (240 cm profile-1) less in the C-GS rotation compared with C-C and C-W rotations. Corn yield increased as water use (yield-water use) increased in C-W rotation but yield-water use relationships tended to be negative in C-C and C-GS rotations. Grain sorghum yield increased with water use in both rotations but at a greater rate in GS-GS compared with C-GS. Despite greater corn grain yield in C-W, our economic analysis showed that wheat was the least profitable of the three crops causing the C-W rotation to be least profitable. In this study, the most profitable limited irrigation crop rotation was corn-grain sorghum (C-GS). Keywords: Corn-sorghum-wheat, Crop rotation, Limited irrigation, Profitability, Supplementary irrigation, Sustainability.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 14-30
Author(s):  
M Jahangir Alam ◽  
S Ahmed ◽  
MK Islam ◽  
R Islam ◽  
M Islam

Cropping systems of Bangladesh are highly diverse and cultivation costs of puddled transplanted rice (PTR) are high. Therefore, an improved system is needed to address the issues, a field experiment was conducted during 2011-2013 to evaluate system intensification with varying degrees of cropping systems and residue retention. Four cropping systems (CSE) namely CSE1: T. boro rice-T. aman rice (control), CSE2: wheat-mungbean-T. aman rice (wheat and mungbean sown using a power tiller-operated seeder (PTOS) with full tillage in a single pass; puddled transplanted aman), CSE3: wheat-mungbean-dry seeded DS aman rice (DSR), and CSE4: wheat-mungbean-DS aman rice (all sown by PTOS with strip tillage) were compared. Two levels of aman rice residue retention (removed; partial retention i.e. 40 cm of standing stubble) were compared in sub plots. Grain yield was significantly higher (by 11%) when wheat was grown after DSR than PTR. Similarly, PTR and DSR (aman rice) produced statistically similar crop yields. Rice residue retention resulted a significantly higher (by 10%) wheat yield and a slightly increased (by 6%) mungbean yield than that of residues removed. The system productivity of CSE4 was significantly higher (by 10%) than CSE1 when averaged of the two years data. Partial aman residue retention gave significantly higher system yield than residue removal (by 0.6 t ha-1). After two years, no effect of CSE or partial aman residue retention was found on soil physical property (bulk density) of the top soil. Therefore, CSE4 along with residue retention would be more effective for sustainable crop production. The Agriculturists 2019; 17(1-2) 14-30


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 210 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. A. Quddus ◽  
M. J. Abedin Mian ◽  
H. M. Naser ◽  
M. A. Hossain ◽  
S. Sultana

The experiment was conducted to measure crop yields, nutrient concentration, nutrient uptake and balance by using different nutrient management practices for mustard-mungbean-T. aman rice cropping system in calcareous soil of Madaripur, Bangladesh. Different nutrient management practices were absolute nutrient control (T1); farmer’s practice (T2); AEZ based nutrient application (T3) and soil test based nutrient application (T4). The practices were compared in a randomized completely block design with three replications over two consecutive years. The average yield through application of soil test based nutrient (T4) was showed effective to get highest yields of mustard (1530 kg ha-1), mungbean (1632 kg ha-1) and T. aman rice (4729 kg ha-1). The same practices (T4) exhibited the greatest nutrients uptake by the test crops. The apparent balance of N and K was negative; however it was less negative and less deficiency detect in T4 treatment. Positive balance of P observed in all practices except in T1. There was a positive S balance (7.60 kg ha-1) in T4 but negative in T1, T2 and T3. Zinc balance was found positive in T3 and T4 and negative in T1 and T2. Boron balance in the system was neutral or slightly positive in T1 and negative in T2 but positive in T3 and T4. Organic matter, N, P, S, Zn and B status in soil was improved by T4 treatment. The results suggested that the soil test based nutrient application is viable and sustainable for mustard-mungbean-T. aman rice cropping system in calcareous soils of Bangladesh.


2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Kodjo Avornyo ◽  
◽  
Osamu Ito ◽  
Gordana Kranjac-Berisavljevic ◽  
Osamu Saito ◽  
...  

Despite the growing demand for rice in Ghana, domestic rice production remains low, resulting in the importation of about 70% of the rice consumed in Ghana. In spite of the fact that 39-47% of the 20-28% of Ghana’s total geographic area classified as inland valley wetlands is considered suitable for rice cultivation, less than 15% is presently being used. A household survey was therefore conducted in six communities, Fihini (F), Cheshegu (C), Dabogushei (D), Kpalgum (K), Zergua (Z), and Yoggu (Y), of the Tolon district in northern Ghana in order to identify factors affecting the introduction of rice into the cropping system. Maize, groundnut, rice, and yam were found to be the four major crops grown in the communities. Overall, 64% of respondents cultivate rice, but this figure is particularly low (30%) in F and Y communities. Rice is usually combined with two other major crops, most frequently maize and yam. In C, D, and K communities, about 90% of households cultivate at least, three out of the four major crops. The interview with farmers revealed that rice yield is 0.73 t/ha on average and significantly higher in K and C (1.06 t/ha and 0.93 t/ha, respectively) than in D (0.37 t/ha). The average distance from compound houses to rice and maize fields is significantly shorter in C, D, and K. Similarly, the rate of rice introduction in C, D, and K is higher than in F, Z, and Y, suggesting that distance to inland valleys may be one of the factors that influence the incorporation of rice into the cropping systems of these communities. Principal component analysis of crop yields and cattle number for the Y community revealed that rice growers tend to have higher crop productivity while cattle production is higher among non-rice growers. Within the community, the productivity of upland crops and balance between crop production and cattle production may be important factors that influence the incorporation of rice into the cropping system.


Soil Research ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Tatzber ◽  
Michael Stemmer ◽  
Heide Spiegel ◽  
Christian Katzlberger ◽  
Franz Zehetner ◽  
...  

The stabilisation of 14C-labelled farmyard manure was investigated under different cropping systems (crop rotation, monoculture, and bare fallow) in a long-term field experiment established in 1967. Solid-state 13C-NMR of bulk soils yielded a gradient of increasing aromatic properties in the order: straw manure–crop rotation < straw manure–monoculture < straw and farmyard manure–bare fallow. The opposite trend was observed for O-alkyl groups. The farmyard manure–bare fallow treatment was used to investigate changes of humic acids (HAs) with time. The FT-IR bands of aromatics, carbonyl groups, and a band of methyls and benzene rings increased over the 36 years of the experiment, whereas 2 amide bands and a band of sulfone and/or ester groups decreased. Fluorescence spectroscopy verified the increase in aromatic properties with age. Consequently, during soil organic matter stabilisation, HAs showed increasing properties of carbonyl and aromatic groups, whereas amidic groups decreased. The dynamic character of HAs, as shown by 14C, was also reflected by distinct spectroscopic changes over the period of investigation.


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