Global CA-CoP CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE COMMUNITY OF

for sustainable agriculture, land use and ecosystem management


Dear Subscribers,

Please see herebelow the June 2022 Conservation Agriculture Research Newsletter from Cornell.

Thank you Professor Hobbs for sharing.

Apologies for any cross-posting.

Amir Kassam

Moderator

Global CA-CoP

e-mail: [log in to unmask]

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

URL: http://www.act-africa.org/

URL: https://ecaf.org/
URL:
http://www.caa-ap.org/

 

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Peter Hobbs <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2022 at 15:15
Subject: June 2022 CA research newsletter
To: Amir Kassam <[log in to unmask]>


Dear Amir: Here is our June 2022 Conservation Agriculture Scoopit Research Update. You can also view online at https://www.scoop.it/topic/conservation-agriculture-by-conservation-ag?curate=true&null 
Can you send this out to people who get your listserv material? The hard copy is below.

An easier link to see all the research papers on CA is as follows:

Also, visit our main website at http://soilhealth.org for news and other CA information. Please use this link since we had to move our web site to a new server and this links takes you to the CA web site.

Many thanks for helping to distribute this. Peter



Conservation Agriculture Research Updates - June 2022
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Cornell Conservation Agriculture Group (soilhealth.org)'s insight:
Cornell Conservation Agriculture Group (soilhealth.org)'s insight:
Cornell Conservation Agriculture Group (soilhealth.org)'s insight:
Cornell Conservation Agriculture Group (soilhealth.org)'s insight:
This study looks at the impact of long-term CA production systems under rice-based cropping systems on pest status. In this study, direct and indirect effects of tillage (zero, reduced and conventional tillage), residue retention and cropping sequences on abundance and damage by pests were investigated. After 4–5 years of experimentation, populations of oriental armyworm in wheat, mealybug and bandicoot rat in rice were found to increase abnormally in CA-based production systems. Conventionally tilled plots had a significant negative effect while residue load in zero-tilled plots had a significant positive effect on larval population build-up of armyworm. Based on the present study, pest management strategies in CA need to be revisited with respect to tillage, residue retention on soil surface, grassy weeds in the field and cropping sequences to deliver the full benefits of CA in MIGP to achieve the sustainable development goals under the climate change scenarios.
Cornell Conservation Agriculture Group (soilhealth.org)'s insight:
Cornell Conservation Agriculture Group (soilhealth.org)'s insight:
This paper suggests that to till or not to till is still a confusing question for many farmers. The objective of this paper is to clearly distinguish between the different principles of CA, and determine the net effects of NT on improving and sustaining agro-ecosystems based on 49 recent meta-analyses. The study concludes that no-tillage by itself leads to yield declines, whereas residue retention is the main driver for yield increases. The same result was found for water erosion control and carbon sequestration with residue retention once again a key driver for improvement. They conclude that to till, or not to till, is not the question: residue retention seems more critical. This supports some other data that no-till by itself is not optimal but with residue retention it becomes beneficial.
Cornell Conservation Agriculture Group (soilhealth.org)'s insight:
This study estimated the the spatial-temporal variations of maize yields from 13-year on-farm trials from 4 countries in Southern Africa. Agronomic data from long-term CA trials is used with gridded biophysical and socioeconomic variables. Comparisons were made between CA and CT practices with above and below average precipitation. The variable importance analysis showed that the altitude, precipitation, temperature, and soil physical and nutrients conditions variables explained most of the variation in maize grain yield. Maps were generated to identify the locations where CA had a yield advantage over CP during seasons with below and above-average precipitation. The paper concludes that multi-source remotely sensed data, coupled with advanced and efficient machine learning algorithms provides accurate, cost-effective, and timely platforms for predicting the optimal locations for upscaling sustainable agricultural technologies. 
Cornell Conservation Agriculture Group (soilhealth.org)'s insight:
This is another paper looking at the shift from CT to CA and the issue of weeds and in this paper the weed seed bank. Two on-farm CA experiments were sampled at two sites in Bangladesh for the effects of strip planting (SP) and bed planting (BP), plus no-tillage (NT) in one site with increased retention of the residue of previous crops (20% vs. 50%). The conventional tillage (CT) and 20% residue was the control treatment. The weed seedbank in 0–15 cm soil was quantified by assessing the emergence of weeds from soils collected from the field after irrigation i rice and after wheat. The fewest number of weed species (especially broadleaf weeds), and the lowest weed density and biomass was in SP, followed by CT, BP, and NT, with 50% crop residue mulch. Relative to CT, the SP, BP, and NT produced relatively more perennials weeds. They conclude that continuous CA, for 3 or more years, in two rice-based crop rotations, decreased the size of the weed seedbank, but increased the relative proliferation of specific perennial weeds. 



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