Can permanent grassland soils with elevated organic carbon buffer negative effects of more persistent precipitation regimes on forage grass performance?

Agricultural practices enhancing soil organic carbon (SOC) show potential to buffer negative effects of climate change on forage grass performance. We tested this by subjecting five forage grass varieties differing in fodder quality and drought/flooding resistance to increased persistence in summer precipitation regimes (PR) across sandy and sandy-loam soils from either permanent (high SOC) or temporary grasslands (low SOC) in adjacent parcels. Over the course of two consecutive summers, monoculture mesocosms were subjected to rainy/dry weather alternation either every 3 days or every 30 days, whilst keeping total precipitation equal.

Provision of metadata of European agricultural long-term experiments through BonaRes and EJP SOIL collaboration.

Agricultural Long-Term Experiments (LTEs) are crucial agricultural research infrastructures for monitoring the long term effects of management and environment on crop production and soil resources. We have compiled the meta-information of 616 LTEs from 30 different countries across Europe with a duration of typically 20 years, including clustered information of the European LTEs in different categories (management operations, land use, duration, status, etc.).

Biochar amendment before or after composting affects compost quality and N losses, but not P plant uptake.

We investigated the use of biochar (10% on a dry weight basis) to improve the composting process and/or the compost quality by adding it to either the feedstock mixture or the mature compost. The addition of biochar to the feedstocks was essayed in a full scale trial using a mixture of green waste and the organic fraction of municipal solid waste. Addition of biochar to mature compost was performed in a medium scale experiment.