Long-term effects of best management practices on crop yield and nitrogen surplus

Submitted: 18 December 2014
Accepted: 31 January 2015
Published: 11 March 2015
Abstract Views: 3012
PDF: 948
HTML: 471
Publisher's note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Authors

Inherent in the concept of good agricultural practice (BMP) is that it improves resource use efficiency, mitigates environmental impact or increases farm profitability. However, it is usually impossible to achieve all the objectives, and trade-offs need to be accepted, such as a reduction in productivity together with a reduction in costs or an increase of soil organic matter. A European FP7 project, Catch-C (http://www.catch-c.eu) analyses the effects that different management practices have on productivity, mitigation of climate change and chemical, physical and biological soil fertility, based on simple indicators. Such indicators were collected from international literature, national scientific or technical journals, or grey literature that dealt with long-term field trials in Europe. We collected and analysed data from more than 350 experiments. This paper presents the overall results of the effects of a series of BMP have on crop productivity, soil nitrogen (N) uptake, N use efficiency end N balance. Important interactions with soil and climate types, crop and duration of the experiment were noticed for most BMPs. Rotations, also including double cropping, were among practices with more positive effects of productivity and N indicators. A slight reduction of yield counteracted benefits to soil quality and to climate change mitigation of minimum and no tillage, and of organic fertilisers.

Dimensions

Altmetric

PlumX Metrics

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Citations

Supporting Agencies

European Commission

How to Cite

Zavattaro, L., Costamagna, C., Grignani, C., Bechini, L., Spiegel, A., Lehtinen, T., Guzmán, G., Krüger, J., D’Hose, T., Pecio, A., van Evert, F. K., & ten Berge, H. F. (2015). Long-term effects of best management practices on crop yield and nitrogen surplus. Italian Journal of Agronomy, 10(1), 47–50. https://doi.org/10.4081/ija.2015.643

Similar Articles

1 2 3 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.