Global CA-CoP CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE COMMUNITY OF

for sustainable agriculture, land use and ecosystem management


Dear Subscribers,

Please see herebelow the July 2022 Cornell CA research newsletter.

Thank you Professor Peter 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: Fri, 1 Jul 2022 at 16:06
Subject: July 2022 Cornell CA research newsletter
To: Amir Kassam <[log in to unmask]>

Dear Amir: Here is our July 2022 Cornell 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 - July 2022
Powered by Scoop.it
With more dry spells in Southern Africa in recent years, the interest in CA to secure crop yields in rainfed areas has grown. This study in Zimbabwe looked at the effects of CA on finger millets growth, yield and water-use efficiency. There were 5 treatments 1) conventional tillage (CT), 2) CT + mulch (partial CA1), 3) reduced tillage only (partial CA2), 4) reduced tillage + mulching (partial CA3) and 5) reduced tillage + mulching + intercropping (full CA). All mulched treatments had 15-32% more soil water content over the two growing seasons compared to the control resulting in better finger millet yields. The full CA treatment achieved the best finger millet grain yield. They concluded that CA, particularly when practiced in full, was more effective at offsetting the water limitations imposed by intra-seasonal dry spells on finger millet and significantly improved productivity.
This study looks at various nitrogen placement methods in CA systems with residue retention in order to increase N-use efficiency. The study assessed the impact of three N placement methods, i.e., NPM1: both the N splits were surface band placed, NPM2: the first split of N was sub-surface point placed and second N split (late vegetative stage) was surface band applied, and NPM3: both the N splits were sub-surface point placed, under 4-long-term tillage and residue management (+R) options, i.e., permanent raised bed (PB+R), zero-till flat (ZT+R) conventional till flat (CT+R) and first time zero till flat sowing of the crop on last 10-year fallow land (FZT+R), in an on-going long-term study (since 2008) in maize for three consecutive years (2018–2020). Sub-surface point placement of both the N splits (NPM3) increased maize grain yield by 4.7, 7.0 and 6.0% (3-years mean basis) compared to NPM2, under CA-based PB, ZT, and FZT plots, respectively. 
From [log in to unmask]&ssm=38200366869991547108727073936702&ssn=23fd18e2dd090c8cc8d007d872d47e015c225d413f5d-79bd-432b-83d324&sso=60d46027-84e6e327f434c42b737c360a53556b8164df7b032c71ea80&ssp=00076544421656604323165662212586165&ssq=36840121407377084539214073405279446668223&ssr=MjEyLjEyOS4xMS40Mg==&sst=Mozilla/5.0%20scpitspi-rs&ssv=&ssw=&ssx=W10=" target="_blank"> validate.perfdrive.com - June 30, 2:49 PM
This study in semi-arid climates in Spain looked at nitrous oxide (NO) emissions and related microbial communities and their interaction with enhanced efficiency N-fertilizers in the transition year from tillage to no-tillage. They looked at the effectiveness of DMPSA (nitrification inhibitor) + NBPT (nitrogen stabilizer that slows the conversion of urea to crop available nitrogen) applied with urea and calcium ammonium nitrate to mitigate NO in rainfed barley. The highest N2O emissions were measured 49 days after harvest (immediately after a rainfall event that reactivated soil microorganisms), for the treatment with fertiliser without inhibitor combined with tillage. No tillage led to a higher abundance of Cyanobacteria, Verrucomicrobia and Bacteroidetes and resulted in better crop and higher plant density compared with tillage, thus increasing yields and N use efficiency and decreasing N2O emissions. They concluded that shifting from conventional tillage to no tillage enhanced the balance between N use efficiency and yield-scaled N2O emissions in the first year of conversion, particularity with the use of the double inhibitors.
This study explores the short-term agronomic and economic differences between mechanized conventional tillage and mechanized CA in Zambia using a 4-wheel tractor. This on-farm study looked at 3 treatments: 1) disc harrowing (DH) plus residue burning, 2) ripping tillage (RT), and 3) no-till plus soil cover. Maize and soybean were the crops. It was for two years with a wet and dry year. In the dry year for both maize and soybean NT and RT had better yields than DH. But in a wet year, DH and RT yielded better than NT for maize but not soybean. NT and RT showed better stands of maize and soybeans at germination and maturity than DH. The study estimates the gross margins for both crops in the wet and dry seasons and conclude that the potential of mechanized CA among small and medium-scale farmers in SSA is good.
This study looked at various conservation management practices -- agroforestry, cover cropping, no-till, reduced tillage, and residue return on surface runoff and erosion. Most of the data were collected from China, USA, Europe, and Africa. They compared production with and without these CMP's. They explored interactions between CMP practice type, soil texture, surface runoff, and soil erosion. They then related changes in surface runoff and soil erosion to 13 other soil health and agronomic indicators, including soil organic carbon, soil aggregation, infiltration, porosity, subsurface leaching, and cash crop yield. They found that across all CMP's, surface runoff and erosion had respective mean decreases of 67% and 80% compared with controls. Cover cropping provided the largest decreases in erosion and surface runoff, thus emphasizing the importance of maintaining continuous vegetative cover on soils. 
This study from Eastern India looks at precision nutrient management under the CA-based maize-wheat system. There are 7 treatment combinations involving tillage (i) CT and Permanent beds (PB); and (ii) nutrient management rates, application methods; farmer fertilizer (FFP), State recommendations (SR), and precision nutrient management using a Nutrient Expert tool (NE), and Greenseeker (GS) using broadcasting (B) or drilling (D). The results showed that NE, NE+GS, and SR-based nutrient management tactics with drilling improved crop yields, nutrient-use efficiency (NUE), and economic profitability relative to NE, SR, and FFP broadcasting methods. Maize-wheat system productivity and net returns under NE+GS-drilling on PB were significantly higher by 31.2%, 49.7% compared to FFP-broadcasting method, respectively. They conclude that PB-based maize-wheat system together with precision nutrient management approaches (NE+GS+drilling) can significantly increase crop yields, NUE, and profitability while reducing the emission of greenhouse gases
This Brazilian study evaluated the long-term effects of soil management systems (SMS) on liming efficiency, soil chemical properties and wheat yield. The study was part of a long-term experiment started in 1986 in Brazil and used data from 2008-2015 with lime added in 2008. There were two CA systems, no-tillage (NT) and reduced tillage (RT) and two CT systems, disk ploughing + disk harrowing and mouldboard ploughing + disk harrowing annually. The NT system was the most sustainable with increases in SOC. After liming, the CT systems were more effective that CA systems in decreasing Al3+ toxicity and increasing soil pH and Ca2+ and Mg2+ concentrations at deeper soil layers. But the NT system had higher wheat yields (+18%). The NT system was the least detrimental to soil organic carbon, an important indicator of soil quality. 




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