This study focuses on the effect of inorganic nitrogen fertilizers on the quality of perennial grasses. Both grasses and legumes are important in swards, and each type of grass has different biological and ecological properties. Legumes in multi-species swards, especially in their early ages, benefit other Poaceae grasses by improving their growth.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFuture European agriculture should achieve high productivity while limiting its impact on the environment. Legume-supported crop rotations could contribute to these goals, as they request less nitrogen (N) fertilizer inputs, show high resource use efficiency and support biodiversity. However, legumes grown for their grain (pulses) are not widely cultivated in Europe.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe benefits of cereal-legume mixed cropping is a sustainable agricultural practice. However, knowledge of the genotypic differences of semi-leafless pea varieties is not enough to help them compete with cereals. In this study, the effects of Lithuania's newest Pisum sativum cultivars ('Egle DS' and 'Lina DS') and, for comparison, a control cultivar ('Jūra DS') established with in mixed cropping system were investigated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFReducing tillage intensity and increasing crop diversity by including perennial legumes is an agrotechnical practice that strongly affects the soil environment. Strip tillage may be beneficial in the forage legume-cereals intercropping system due to more efficient utilization of biological nitrogen. Field experiments were conducted on a clay loam Cambisol to determine the effect of forage legume-winter wheat strip tillage intercropping on soil nitrate nitrogen (N-NO) content and cereal productivity in various sequences of rotation in organic production systems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGrassland diversity can support sustainable intensification of grassland production through increased yields, reduced inputs and limited weed invasion. We report the effects of diversity on weed suppression from 3 years of a 31-site continental-scale field experiment.At each site, 15 grassland communities comprising four monocultures and 11 four-species mixtures based on a wide range of species' proportions were sown at two densities and managed by cutting.
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