• Authors:
    • Bengtson, L. E.
    • Fagre, D.
    • Pederson, G.
    • Zeyuan, Q.
    • Prato, T.
    • Williams, J. R.
  • Source: Environmental Management
  • Volume: 45
  • Issue: 3
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: Potential economic impacts of future climate change on crop enterprise net returns and annual net farm income (NFI) are evaluated for small and large representative farms in Flathead Valley in Northwest Montana. Crop enterprise net returns and NFI in an historical climate period (1960-2005) and future climate period (2006-2050) are compared when agricultural production systems (APSs) are adapted to future climate change. Climate conditions in the future climate period are based on the A1B, B1, and A2 CO(2) emission scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report. Steps in the evaluation include: (1) specifying crop enterprises and APSs (i.e., combinations of crop enterprises) in consultation with locals producers; (2) simulating crop yields for two soils, crop prices, crop enterprises costs, and NFIs for APSs; (3) determining the dominant APS in the historical and future climate periods in terms of NFI; and (4) determining whether NFI for the dominant APS in the historical climate period is superior to NFI for the dominant APS in the future climate period. Crop yields are simulated using the Environmental/Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model and dominance comparisons for NFI are based on the stochastic efficiency with respect to a function (SERF) criterion. Probability distributions that best fit the EPIC-simulated crop yields are used to simulate 100 values for crop yields for the two soils in the historical and future climate periods. Best-fitting probability distributions for historical inflation-adjusted crop prices and specified triangular probability distributions for crop enterprise costs are used to simulate 100 values for crop prices and crop enterprise costs. Averaged over all crop enterprises, farm sizes, and soil types, simulated net return per ha averaged over all crop enterprises decreased 24% and simulated mean NFI for APSs decreased 57% between the historical and future climate periods. Although adapting APSs to future climate change is advantageous (i.e., NFI with adaptation is superior to NFI without adaptation based on SERF), in six of the nine cases in which adaptation is advantageous, NFI with adaptation in the future climate period is inferior to NFI in the historical climate period. Therefore, adaptation of APSs to future climate change in Flathead Valley is insufficient to offset the adverse impacts on NFI of such change.
  • Authors:
    • Bathgate, A.
    • Lawes, R. A.
    • Robertson, M. J.
    • Byrne, F.
    • White, P.
    • Sands, R.
  • Source: Crop and Pasture Science
  • Volume: 61
  • Issue: 3
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: Break crops (e. g. pulses, lupins, canola, oats) underpin the continued profitability of cereal (wheat or barley) based cropping sequences. The area sown on farms to break crops varies widely across geographical regions according to climate, soil type mix, enterprise mix (crop v. livestock), and other constraints such as the prevalence of soil-borne disease. Given recent fluctuations in the area of established break crops in Western Australia, there are concerns about their long-term prospects in the farming system. A survey of the area and grain yield of break crops on-farm was combined with whole-farm bio-economic modelling to determine the upper limit to the area of break crops on representative farms in 4 agro-climatic regions. Sensitivity analysis was conducted to ascertain the potential effects of varying commodity prices (sheep and grain), costs of production, and assumptions on the yield of break crops and the boost to the yield of following cereals. The survey revealed that the two dominant break crops, lupins and canola, occupied 8-12% and 8-9%, respectively, of farm area on those farms that grew them in the medium-rainfall zone and this declined to 6-8% and 7-10% in the drier region. Nevertheless, the modelling results show that break crops are an important component of the farming system, even where the area is small, and the response of whole-farm profit to percent of the farm allocated to break crops is relatively. at near the optimum of 23-38%. The modelled area of break crops at maximum profit is higher than that found in farm surveys. The discrepancy could possibly be explained by the lower break crop yields realised by farmers and a reduced boost to cereal yields following break crops than assumed in models. Also, deterministic models do not account for risk, which is an important consideration in the decision to grow break crops. However, the yield difference does not explain the discrepancy entirely and raises questions about farmer motivations for adoption of break crops. The scope for increased area of break crops beyond 23-38% of the farm is limited, even with increases in the yield enhancements in subsequent cereal crops, higher break crop prices, and higher fertiliser costs. Further research is required to better quantify costs and benefits of break crops in Western Australian farming systems.
  • Authors:
    • Indrakumar, N.
    • Jayapalaiah, G. P.
    • Sreenatha, A.
  • Source: International Journal of Agricultural Engineering
  • Volume: 3
  • Issue: 2
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: Finger millet also known as Ragi or Mandwa is the most important small millet food and fodder crop. It is extensively cultivated in Asian countries like India, Ceylon, Malaysia, China, Nepal and Japan and African countries. It is widely grown in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar, Gujarat and Maharashtra and in the hilly regions of Uttar Pradesh, Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh. Karnataka is a major finger millet producing state in India covering about 43 per cent area of finger millet cultivation and producing nearly 49 per cent of the total food grain production (Anonymous, 2010). This crop is grown both in dryland as well as in irrigated conditions where irrigation facilities are available and it constitute only 5 per cent area of the finger millet grown in Karnataka. Whereas the rain fed finger millet is about 95 per cent and usually it is grown in Kharif and irrigated finger millet in Rabi or summer. Finger millet is often intercropped with legumes if it is grown under rain fed condition. Finger millet has outstanding properties as a subsistence food crop. Its small seeds can be stored safely for many years without insect damage, which makes it a traditional component of farmers' risk avoidance strategies in drought-prone regions of Eastern Africa and South Asia. Because the seed can be stored for decades (some say 50 years), it is highly valued as a reserve against famines. Finger millet is especially valuable as it contains the amino acid methionine, which is lacking in the diets of hundreds of millions of the poor who live on starchy staples such as cassava, plantain, polished rice, or maize meal. Finger millet can be ground and cooked into cakes, puddings or porridge. The grain is made into a fermented drink (or beer) in Nepal and in many parts of Africa. The straw from finger millet is used as animal fodder.
  • Authors:
    • Dougall, A.
    • Halpin, N. V.
    • Stirling, G. R.
    • Bell, M. J.
  • Source: Proceedings of the 2010 Conference of the Australian Society of Sugar Cane Technologists held at Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia, 11-14 May 2010
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: Lesion nematode ( Pratylenchus zeae) occurs in almost every sugarcane field in Queensland and is perhaps the most important of a community of nematode pests that cost the Australian sugar industry an estimated $82 million/annum in lost production. Legumes such as soybean and peanut are relatively poor hosts of the nematode and, when they are used as rotation crops in the sugarcane farming system, populations of P. zeae are markedly reduced. This paper provides data on the host status of other rotation crops that might have a place in the sugarcane farming system, together with some common weeds. The capacity of P. zeae to multiply on various plants was assessed after 70 days in pots at temperatures suitable for nematode reproduction, with multiplication factors calculated as (Pf/Pi), where Pf was the final nematode population density and Pi the initial inoculum density. Sugarcane and forage sorghum had the highest multiplication factors (Pf/Pi >40), whereas the nematode population on most other plants increased 5 to 13 times. Some cultivars of wheat, oats and Rhodes grass had multiplication factors of only 3 or 4 and three crops ( Setaria cv. Splenda, barley cv. Grimmett and cowpea cv. Red Caloona) were non-hosts (Pf/Pi
  • Authors:
    • Demuzere, M.
    • Gillijns, K.
    • Diels, J.
    • Govers, G.
    • Van den Putte, A.
  • Source: European Journal of Agronomy
  • Volume: 33
  • Issue: 3
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: Many strategies exist to combat soil degradation through erosion and compaction on agricultural fields. One of these strategies is conservation agriculture (CA). Reduced or no-tillage techniques, together with crop residue management and crop rotation are the pillars of CA. The term reduced tillage covers a range of tillage practices but it never involves inverting the soil. In this way, soil disturbance is minimised and crop residues are left on the soil. Studies in many European countries have shown that CA can indeed be very effective in combating soil erosion. However, soil and water conservation do not appear as main drivers in farmers' decisions to shift or not to CA. Economic factors tend to be more important, but there are a lot of uncertainties on this domain. Studies show that production costs are mostly reduced, mainly by reduced fuel costs. Although many European studies have investigated the effect of reduced soil tillage on crop yields, a lot of uncertainties still exist. Most of the studies only cover a small range of field experiments, in one region. We present a meta-regression analysis (47 European studies, 563 observations) that compares crop yields under conventional tillage (CT), reduced tillage (RT) and no-tillage (NT) techniques. We analysed the possible influence on the relative yield ((RT or NT)/CT) of crop type, tillage depth, crop rotation, climate, CT yield and length of application of RT or NT. Our analysis shows that, while the introduction of conservation tillage in Europe may indeed have some negative effect on yields, these effects can be expected to be limited: the overall average reduction we found was ca. 4.5%. NT reduces crop yield on average with 8.5%. However, RT leads to a reduction in crop yields for maize and winter cereals only. By applying a linear mixed model, the importance of tillage depth and crop type as classification effects could be confirmed. Surprisingly, no-tillage did perform worse under drier climatic conditions. Negative effects such as an increased prevalence of pests and a lower quality of seed placement seem to outweigh possible gains due to increased water availability. On clay and sandy soils, however, this negative effect of no-tillage is counteracted, and all conservation tillage techniques perform better under drier climatic conditions. Another important finding is that, in cereals only rotations, relative yields under conservation tillage tend to decrease with time. Our analysis shows that conservation tillage is certainly a viable option for European agriculture from the viewpoint of agricultural productivity. Potential negative effects on agricultural productivity can be strongly reduced by applying sufficiently deep tillage and using a crop rotation including crops other than cereals. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
  • Authors:
    • Melander, B.
    • Munkholm, L. J.
    • Hansen, E. M.
    • Olesen, J. E.
  • Source: Soil & Tillage Research
  • Volume: 109
  • Issue: 1
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: Finding ways of reducing nitrate leaching in Northern Europe has become an extremely important task, especially under the projected climate changes that are expected to exacerbate the problem. To this end, two field experiments were established under temperate coastal climate conditions to evaluate the effect of tillage, straw retainment and cropping sequences, including cover crops, on nitrate leaching. The experiments were established in autumn 2002 on a loamy sand with 92 g clay kg(-1) and a sandy loam with 147 g clay kg(-1). The tillage treatments were stubble cultivation to 8-10 cm or 3-4 cm, direct drilling, or ploughing to 20 cm. The hypothesis was that (i) decreasing soil tillage intensity would decrease leaching compared to ploughing, (ii) leaving straw in the field would decrease leaching compared to removing straw, and (iii) a spring/winter crop rotation with catch crops would be more efficient in reducing nitrate leaching than a winter crop rotation. Overall, we were not able to confirm the three hypotheses. The effect of soil tillage on leaching might be blurred because the studied crop rotations had a high proportion of winter crops and because catch crops were grown whenever the alternative would have been bare soil in autumn and winter. The spring/winter crop rotation with catch crops was not found to be more efficient in reducing nitrate leaching than the winter crop rotation. In contrast, in a single year the winter crop rotation showed significantly lower leaching than the spring/winter crop rotations, probably due to the spring/winter crop rotation including peas, which may be considered a high-risk crop. Our study highlights that management practices that improve biomass production throughout the year are crucial in order to tighten the nitrogen cycle and thereby reduce nitrate leaching. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
  • Authors:
    • Gaweda, D.
    • Harasim, E.
  • Source: Annales Umcs, Agricultura
  • Volume: 65
  • Issue: 1
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: The objective of the study was to assess the effect of catch crops on the yield and energetic efficiency of the main cereal crop grown under monoculture. The study was carried out in the years 2006-2008 at Uhrusk experiment farm. The trial was localized on a mixed rendzina soil, of medium depth, developed from chalk limestone. The experiment included spring cereals such as wheat, barley and oats as well as stubble catch crops: non-catch crop control, white mustard, blue phacelia, winter oilseed rape and a legume mixture - narrow-leaved lupin+field peas. The highest yield increase over the non-catch crop control (9.4%) was found when phacelia was grown as a catch crop after wheat. The lowest yield increment occurred in barley grown after legumes (ca. 8%) and in oats gown after phacelia and oilseed rape (ca. 7%). The energetic efficiency of cereal production was more related to the main cereal crop than to the catch crop. The production of barley and oats had a higher energetic efficiency (4.71 and 4.65, respectively) than that of wheat (3.84). The use of catch crops lowered but to a small degree the energetic efficiency of spring cereal production.
  • Authors:
    • Evans, A.
    • Blummel, M.
    • Noble, A. D.
    • Ahmad, W.
    • Simmons, R. W.
    • Weckenbrock, P.
  • Source: Irrigation and Drainage Systems
  • Volume: 24
  • Issue: 1-2
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: In 2006 a comprehensive sampling program was undertaken in two pre-selected peri-urban villages in Faisalabad, Pakistan to evaluate the soil and agronomic impacts of long-term (25-30 years) untreated wastewater re-use on wheat grain and straw yields and attributes of wheat straw fodder quality. Soil SAR, ESP, RSC and ECe were 63%, 37%, 31%, and 50% higher under wastewater (WW) as compared with canal water (CW) irrigated plots. Further, 2.7 and 6.65 fold increases in soil NO 3-+NO 2--N and Olsen-P were observed in WW as compared with CW irrigated plots. However, no significant differences in grain yield, wheat straw biomass, or fodder quality attributes were observed between WW and CW irrigated plots. In addition, for both CW and WW irrigated plots wheat straw, Cd and Pb concentrations were orders of magnitude below the EC Maximum permissible levels for Pb and Cd in feed materials and thus pose no threat to the fodder-livestock food chain. Further, elevated soil N associated with WW irrigated plots has a significant ( p
  • Authors:
    • Fortuna, A. M.
    • Kennedy, A. C.
    • Stubbs, T. L.
  • Source: Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
  • Volume: 58
  • Issue: 1
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: Residue from cultivars of spring wheat ( Triticum aestivum L.), winter wheat, and spring barley ( Hordeum vulgare L.) was characterized for fiber and nutrient traits using reference methods and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Calibration models were developed for neutral detergent fiber (NDF), acid detergent fiber (ADF), acid detergent lignin (ADL), carbon (C), sulfur (S), nitrogen (N), and C:N. When calibrations were tested against validation sets for each crop year, NIRS was an acceptable method for predicting NDF (standard error of prediction (SEP) 0.90) and ADF (SEP0.92) and moderately successful for ADL in 1 year of the study (SEP=0.44; R2=0.81) but less successful for C, S, N, and C:N ( R2 all <0.57). These results indicate that NIRS can predict the NDF and ADF of cereal residue from dryland cropping systems and is a useful tool to estimate residue decomposition potential.
  • Authors:
    • Neffati, M.
    • Belgacem, A. O.
    • Visser, M.
  • Source: Grass and Forage Science
  • Volume: 65
  • Issue: 1
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: When grass species are used to reseed depleted drylands, grazing is often prescribed during the establishment phase. Total protection from grazing often leads to the presence of persistent weed species and is hard to accept by land users keen to graze reseeded land as soon as possible. The particular case of reseeding arid Mediterranean cereal fallows with one native grass species, Stipa lagascae (Stipa), in Tunisia was tested. Seedlings, derived from two different seed sources (selected and bulk), and volunteer annual weed species underwent four different cutting treatments to ground level (early cut, late cut, early and late cuts and no cuts). No effect of any of the treatments on seedling survival or dry matter mass of Stipa seedlings was found. It was concluded that Stipa seedlings are indifferent to the presence of annual weed species and can tolerate more than one cut during the year of establishment. In the context of the study, early grazing of reseeded fallows is worth investigating further.