Global CA-CoP CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

for sustainable agriculture and land management


Dear Subscribers,

Please see herebelow the latest April 2020 Conservation Agriculture Research Scoopit Update from Peter Hobbs at Cornell.

Thank you Peter for sharing.

Amir Kassam

Moderator

Global CA-CoP

e-mail: [log in to unmask]

URL: http://www.fao.org/conservation-agriculture

 

Conservation Agriculture is an ecosystem approach to regenerative sustainable agriculture and land management based on the practical application of context-specific and locally adapted three interlinked principles of: (i) Continuous no or minimum mechanical soil disturbance (no-till seeding/planting and weeding, and minimum soil disturbance with all other farm operations including harvesting);  (ii) permanent maintenance of soil mulch cover (crop biomass, stubble and cover crops); and (iii) diversification of cropping system (economically, environmentally and socially adapted rotations and/or sequences and/or associations involving annuals and/or perennials, including legumes and cover crops), along with other complementary good agricultural production and land management practices. Conservation Agriculture systems are present in all continents, involving rainfed and irrigated systems including annual cropland systems, perennial systems, orchards and plantation systems, agroforestry systems, crop-livestock systems, pasture and rangeland systems, organic production systems and rice-based systems. Conservation Tillage, Reduced Tillage and Minimum Tillage are not Conservation Agriculture, and nor is No-Till on its own (more at: http://www.fao.org/conservation-agriculture).


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Peter Hobbs <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2020 at 21:30
Subject: April 2020 Conservation Agriculture Research Scoopit Update
To: Amir Kassam <[log in to unmask]>


Dear Amir: Here is our April 2020 Conservation Agriculture Research Update. You can also view on line at https://www.scoop.it/topic/conservation-agriculture-by-conservation-ag?curate=true&null  Can you send this out to people who get your list serve material? The hard copy is below.

It has been a while since I was able to compile the monthly Scoopit data so I am catching up during these COVID-19 days and sending updates every month. Many thanks for helping to distribute this. Peter




Powered by Scoop.it
This is an integrative study that assesses the overall impact of CA on soil health. It used  Biofunctool®, a set of in-field indicators, to monitor changes in soil biological functioning. Biofunctool® was used to assess the impact of a conventional tillage (CT) and three CA annual-based cropping systems on soil health on a Cambodian Oxisol. Eight indicators related to the three soil functions were monitored and integrated into a Soil Quality index (SQI), i.e. the Biofunctool® Index. An analysis of soil carbon dynamics showed that CA supports short-term soil organic carbon stabilization compared to CT. This study demonstrates that Biofunctool® is a robust, relevant, time-and cost-effective in-field assessment tool that can be used in multiple ways including cropping system management, capacity building of local stakeholders, and policy dialogue.
This study evaluated the performance of rainy season maize during 2014 under an ongoing long-term trial (established in 2008) with three tillage practices, i.e., permanent bed (PB), zero tillage (ZT), and conventional tillage (CT) as main plots, and four intensified maize-based cropping systems, i.e., maize-wheat-mungbean, maize-chickpea-Sesbania (MCS), maize-mustard-mungbean, and maize-maize-Sesbania) as subplot treatments. In the seventh rainy season of the experiment, maize growth parameters, yield attributes, yield, and water- and energy-use efficiency were highest at fixed plots under ZT. Overall, the results showed that CA-based ZT and PB practices coupled with diversified maize-based cropping systems effectively enhanced maize yield and SOC, as well as water- and energy-use efficiency, in northwestern India.








To unsubscribe from the CA-Cop-L list, click the following link:
&*TICKET_URL(CA-Cop-L,SIGNOFF);