Agronomy for Sustainable Development最新文献

{"title":"Crop Rotation Index for measuring agricultural land use intensity","authors":"Sander JC Janssen,&nbsp;Steven B Hoek,&nbsp;Stan Los,&nbsp;Arun Kumar Pratihast,&nbsp;MJR Rob Knapen","doi":"10.1007/s13593-026-01101-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-026-01101-1","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Crop rotations constitute a crucial way of managing farms. Scientific methods have studied rotations through different approaches. These either focus on the design of rotations, the performance of individual rotations (from a productivity, environmental performance, and/or soil recovery point of view), or the spatial pattern in the landscape. Despite these approaches, there is no method available to investigate the sustainability of a rotation at a large scale based on consistently followed agronomic principles in everyday farming practices. The novel Crop Rotation Index is proposed to fill this gap. To compute the Crop Rotation Index on a parcel basis, a sequence of crops over 6 years is evaluated by 8 indicators, where crops in the sequence are grouped together based on botanical families. These indicators represent, e.g., the frequency of crop categories in a rotation and the number of years between crops from the same category. The Crop Rotation Index was computed for the Netherlands using the parcel registry data. Results are presented at various spatial and temporal scales. Dutch arable regions in the south west and north east have an average value between 0.1 and 0.3, while grass-based systems in the center and north west have a value between 0.9 and 1.0. The results for the Province of Drenthe show that the western part is gradually becoming more intensive in arable crops, with values decreasing from 0.42 to 0.37 over a period of 5 years. A farm level case study on parcel sharing demonstrates that the Crop Rotation Index can capture complex land-sharing arrangements. The current version of the Crop Rotation Index can be extended with new indicators and crop categories and be applied in other regions. It is available as an indicator for performance monitoring in agriculture, supporting farmers in crop decisions, and as part rotation generation tools.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"46 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13593-026-01101-1.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147797200","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On-farm systemic innovations to overcome dead-end situations and support glyphosate-free agriculture in France","authors":"Priscila Duarte Malanski,&nbsp;Marie Thiollet-Scholtus,&nbsp;Bruno Chauvel,&nbsp;Annabelle Revel,&nbsp;Chloé Salembier","doi":"10.1007/s13593-026-01105-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-026-01105-x","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The ban on glyphosate use in France has long been a controversial issue between agricultural stakeholders and public health authorities. Some politicians and scholars have characterized sloping vineyards and low-till crops as dead-end situations: i.e., highly dependent on glyphosate due to the lack of viable alternatives, both from technical and socioeconomic perspectives (mechanization costs, labor constraints). Most agronomic research has focused on developing technical alternatives to glyphosate. We propose shifting from the dominant R&amp;D-centered approach to studying farm-led innovations to investigate ways to overcome these dead-end situations. Using the innovation-tracking approach, we analyzed 16 French case studies. Through semi-structured interviews, we collected data on farmers’ practices and their logic (i.e., the meaning farmers give to their practices within their situations). The results demonstrate six archetypes of glyphosate-free management logics for weeds and cover crops. Winegrower practices include adjusting the frequency and type of mechanical weeding, using equipment adapted to slope conditions (steep slopes, terraces). This equipment can be combined to manage both inter-row cover crops and under-vine weeds. Practices of low-till crop farmers involve integrating preventive and curative weed management strategies with various cover crop termination techniques (livestock grazing, mechanical methods), often linked to the level of farm diversification. We showed for the first time how winegrowers and low-till crop farmers combine the implementation of practices with innovative equipment use and participation in collective action to phase out glyphosate. These systemic innovations allowed farmers to overcome the increase of mechanization costs and workload through the sharing and development of equipment and work organization, ensuring timely weeding during vulnerable stages of the weed life cycle. Therefore, stopping glyphosate use requires a profound re-design of weed and cover crop management throughout the crop cycle. Finally, we argue that studying local innovations challenges how R&amp;D stakeholders characterize dead-end situations regarding alternatives to pesticides.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"46 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147756120","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Process-based modelling in farm greenhouse gas assessment reveals site-specific dynamics and limitations of emission factor methods","authors":"Di He,&nbsp;Enli Wang,&nbsp;Maartje Sevenster,&nbsp;Stuart Brown,&nbsp;John Kirkegaard,&nbsp;Julianne Lilley","doi":"10.1007/s13593-026-01104-y","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-026-01104-y","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a well-recognized tool to assess the environmental impact of food production. To assess partial life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions in agricultural systems with variable weather and management, this study integrated process-based agricultural systems modelling (APSIM) with emission-factor-based calculations to develop a system modelling framework. We assessed the greenhouse gas emission intensity of 11 fields from 2016 to 2021 at Boorowa Agricultural Research Station, representing an Australian cropping farm with comprehensive management records. Net greenhouse gas emissions varied widely across fields and seasons, ranging from −3.87 to 6.10 t CO₂−e ha⁻¹. Emissions were not only determined by seasonal climate but also prior-year management decisions, highlighting the need for a system-level perspective. Compared to the LCA-APSIM approach, averaged emission factors tend to overestimate direct N₂O emission and fail to capture field-scale variability driven by climate and management. This highlights the limitations of the emission factor-based approach. Long-term scenario simulations for a continuous cropping system (canola-wheat-wheat) and a phased pasture-crop system (lucerne (×3)-canola-wheat-wheat, with lucerne ungrazed and 50% cut for hay) clearly demonstrated the trade-off between greenhouse gas emissions and nitrogen input. From a long-term perspective, regardless of management practices or cropping systems, soil organic carbon in agricultural systems will eventually reach equilibrium, after which the system will transition from a carbon sink to a carbon source. To optimize environmental sustainability and food security, advanced farm management strategies must delay the attainment of equilibrium and maximize soil carbon storage potential while maintaining productivity. This study provides new insights into field-scale variability in greenhouse gas emissions, soil organic carbon equilibrium timing, and biases in static N₂O emission methods that have not been quantified in earlier LCA–APSIM applications.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"46 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13593-026-01104-y.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147733541","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Progressing toward agroecology in vineyards through systemic innovation","authors":"Elsa Robelot,&nbsp;Marie-Hélène Jeuffroy,&nbsp;Anne Merot","doi":"10.1007/s13593-026-01087-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-026-01087-w","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Viticulture is facing major challenges, and agroecology is recognized as an innovative approach to enhance food system sustainability. However, knowledge is lacking about how winegrowers design innovations to support agroecology, which limits the ability of farmers and advisers to effectively steer and assess progress toward agroecology. This study aims to develop a tool to assess the agroecology level of vineyards, and to investigate the link between progress in the agroecological transition and the systemic and farm-scale reasoning of innovations. To this end, we interviewed 24 winegrowers, developed a table to characterize the agroecology level of the farms and identified the farmers’ agronomic rationales. Agroecology levels varied widely among the surveyed farms. The agroecology elements of synergy, efficiency, and a circular and solidarity-based economy explained most of the differences between farms at the extreme ends of the score ranges. We used semi-quantitative and qualitative indicators to highlight systemic reasoning in highly agroecological farms. The winegrowers from the most agroecological farms changed their practices more frequently, mainly by implementing practices that rely on system reorganization and redesign and by addressing a wider variety of results when changing their practices. The analysis of these farms revealed several success factors, including the adjustment of other practices after a change, careful observation of the agroecosystem, and a paradigm shift involving long-term reflection on practice effects. Moreover, successful farms are smaller, and have often reduced land areas to gain increased flexibility in production factors. They seek autonomy regarding inputs and promote synergies with respect to the farm’s different business activities. This work provides valuable support to winegrowers and advisers by offering them a simple tool to track the progress of vineyards when transitioning to a more agroecological system. This study also identifies key traits of agroecological farms that can inspire and be adopted on other farms.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"46 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147707780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Designing where to crop and where to graze: a spatial approach toward sustainable farming","authors":"Amelie Kreuzer,&nbsp;Felix Herzog,&nbsp;Daniel Bretscher,&nbsp;Pierluigi Calanca,&nbsp;Anna Edlinger,&nbsp;Anina Gilgen,&nbsp;Olivier Heller,&nbsp;Annelie Holzkämper,&nbsp;Sonja G. Keel,&nbsp;Julian Klein,&nbsp;Lutz Merbold,&nbsp;Chloé Wüst-Galley,&nbsp;Ivo Strahm,&nbsp;Sonja Kay","doi":"10.1007/s13593-026-01096-9","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-026-01096-9","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The world’s growing population raises concerns about future food security. At the same time, environmental challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and the depletion of natural resources must be addressed, calling for a transformation of agriculture. This need is exacerbated by the limited availability of land suitable for arable farming. In this study, we examined the potential of agricultural land for arable farming and grassland use in Switzerland, under the premise that agricultural land use should align with the biophysical and environmental capacity of each location. In an iterative co-design process with scientists and public authorities, we elaborated three scenarios for agricultural transformation, which progressively incorporated (i) biophysical constraints (soil, climate, and topography) and (ii) environmental constraints (soil loss and eutrophication due to risk of erosion), as well as (iii) greenhouse gas emissions from drained organic soils. Our results show that the allocation of 40% arable land and 60% grassland in the most restrictive scenario closely resembles the current distribution (46% and 54%), respectively. However, the scenarios also revealed significant spatial shifts between arable land and grassland at the local level: only two-thirds of today’s arable land areas match their natural site conditions. Evidence from this study underscores the critical importance of site-adapted transitions of agricultural land use and the need for site-adapted management alternatives for farmland presently assigned to inadequate land use. Overall, this research provides a novel contribution by allowing the identification of hotspot areas for agricultural transformation at the local scale. We show that these site-specific land use analyses are essential for guiding effective land use planning and policy advice that strengthen the integrity of environmental performance and agricultural productivity, and support the development of targeted and sustainable land use strategies.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"46 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13593-026-01096-9.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147708588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Temporal yield stability of cereal-cereal and cereal-legume intercropping. A meta-analysis","authors":"Tao Song,&nbsp;Hans Lambers,&nbsp;Chunjie Li,&nbsp;David Makowski,&nbsp;Chaochun Zhang","doi":"10.1007/s13593-026-01098-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-026-01098-7","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Sustainably producing sufficient food for a growing population is a major challenge, as intensive monocultures are highly vulnerable to climate change, pests, and disease outbreaks. Intercropping offers a promising alternative, improving land productivity while delivering multiple ecological benefits. However, the effect of intercropping on temporal yield stability remains poorly understood, and how this stability is affected by different management practices remains uncertain. To address this gap, we conducted a meta-analysis of 511 records from 94 experiments across 45 publications on the effect of intercropping on temporal yield stability, taking into account a wide range of management practices. Temporal yield stability was measured by two metrics, i.e., the coefficient of variation of yield across years, and the yield loss during “poor years” (i.e., years characterized by below-average yields). At the intercropping system level, the values of coefficient of variation in intercropping and monocropping were similar when all types of intercropping were considered together, but yields were significantly more stable in cereal/cereal (8.3%; 95% CI: 4.6–12%) than in cereal/legume intercropping (12.2%; 95% CI:9.11-15.24%). Legumes showed reduced yield stability in intercropping versus monocropping, whereas cereals maintained similar stability across monocropping, cereal/legume, and cereal/cereal systems. Yield gains and temporal stability in intercropping correlated positively, driven by higher land equivalent ratio and net yield effect. Nitrogen input increased yield stability in both intercropping and monocultures. Here we show for the first time that intercropping can increase crop productivity while maintaining yield stability comparable to that of sole cereals, with cereal/cereal intercropping providing an optimized option for maximizing yield without compromising temporal stability in resource-rich systems, and cereal/legume intercropping supporting sustainable production under low-input conditions. However, the yield stability of legumes in intercropping is low compared to monocropping, indicating a need for further research to improve legume varieties and associated management practices.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"46 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147709127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Drivers of arable flora diversity in productive Mediterranean pulse cropping systems","authors":"Anna-Lena Vollheyde,&nbsp;Frank Schaarschmidt,&nbsp;Christina von Haaren","doi":"10.1007/s13593-026-01102-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-026-01102-0","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>To address major environmental challenges, meat-focused agri-food systems should shift to more sustainable plant-based alternatives, mainly centered around food legumes. However, not enough is known about the impact of pulse cultivation on nonmarket services, such as biodiversity conservation. Especially knowledge of the exact effect of management on endangered arable flora is limited. Understanding nonmarket services is essential for communicating the benefits of pulses to consumers, for adapting management practices, and for calculating potential remuneration. This study investigates how management practices, environmental (soil and weather), and landscape contextual factors influence biodiversity and provisioning services in pulse fields, and how these two services interact. Vegetation data from lentil and chickpea experimental plots and organic fields in the Mediterranean region were mapped and analyzed using primary data meta-analysis and ordination methods. We found that management practices are critical for biodiversity conservation in pulse systems. Omitting weed control increases arable flora species richness but not necessarily the Shannon index and monocropping outperforms intercropping in terms of arable flora diversity. Biodiversity in organic fields was significantly higher in field edges than in centers, highlighting the need for zone-specific management. Furthermore, landscape diversity and field size emerged as important drivers of biodiversity, particularly in the edges, where they explained over 20% of the variance. No negative relationship was found between arable flora diversity and grain yield, and biodiversity positively correlated with crop cover, showing that pulse cultivation can support both biodiversity conservation and production in organic systems.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"46 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13593-026-01102-0.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147708589","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Co-design of diversified sorghum-based cropping systems with smallholder farmers in North-Sudanian Burkina Faso","authors":"Abdoul Rasmane Bagagnan,&nbsp;David Berre,&nbsp;Louis-Marie Raboin,&nbsp;Hamado Sawadogo,&nbsp;Heidi Webber,&nbsp;Katrien Descheemaeker","doi":"10.1007/s13593-026-01099-6","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-026-01099-6","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Farmers in the North-Sudanian zone of Burkina Faso face significant soil fertility challenges, which hinder crop productivity. Co-design approaches are increasingly employed to address cropping system performance by involving farmers in adapting their cropping systems. However, farmers’ usual cropping systems are often overlooked, despite their potential for improvement. This study addressed this shortcoming by integrating a quantitative agronomic assessment with farmers’ qualitative evaluation in a co-design process. To our knowledge, this is the first study to systematically compare farmers’ usual systems, research team-proposed systems, and re-designed systems incorporating farmers’ adaptations. Using the Describe, Explain, Explore, Design approach, farmers participated in the co-design of sorghum-based cropping systems from 2021 to 2023. Three annual cycles of the co-design process were conducted, each involving a demonstration, evaluation, and re-design phase. On-farm trials tested research-proposed, farmers’ usual, and re-designed systems. Farmers evaluated the systems performance through ranking and multicriteria scoring. Results revealed that research team–proposed systems did not consistently outperform farmers’ usual cropping systems in terms of average grain yield. However, re-designed systems achieved significant yield increases for sorghum and cowpea in 2023. Farmers’ ranking of the systems did not always align with yield performance, as they also considered other factors, such as labor requirements and adaptability. The row intercropping systems proposed by the research team was evaluated more favorably than farmers’ usual intercropping system as the latter is more labor demanding. Conversely, the farmers’ usual rotational system was preferred over the rotation systems proposed by the research team as the latter integrated legumes that are not used for human consumption. The study underscores the importance of labor demand for farmers. We conclude that incorporating farmers’ usual cropping systems into co-design, while considering farmers’ context, effectively addresses constraints and supports transformation toward sustainability, resilience, and improved livelihoods.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"46 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13593-026-01099-6.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147708590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Integrating tactics for weed seed management provides sustainable weed control in organic rice production","authors":"Xiang Qu,&nbsp;Jiayue Qian,&nbsp;Pinglei Gao,&nbsp;Zheng Zhang,&nbsp;Aimei Hong,&nbsp;Yunhui Duan,&nbsp;Guojun Sun,&nbsp;Sheng Qiang","doi":"10.1007/s13593-026-01100-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-026-01100-2","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Overdependence on manual weeding has limited the expansion of organic rice systems. Although various weed control methods are available for organic rice, they tend to be labor-intensive, costly, and time-consuming. This underscores the importance of identifying cost-effective, labor-saving, and sustainable weed control strategies for organic rice farming systems. Accordingly, a comparative study spanning 10 years was carried out, investigating five weed control treatments in a field trial. These treatments included irrigation water filtration and the removal of floating seeds using a net during irrigation (IR), combined with vinegar sludge (IRV), or a bioherbicide (<i>Sclerotium rolfsii</i>) (IRF), or both V and F (IRVF), as well as conventional triple chemical control (H3) before and after rice transplanting (IRH3). For comparison, H3 alone was used as a control. Compared to H3, the IR-based treatments achieved an average reduction of 90.32%, 91.63%, and 72.32% in seedling weed density, mature weed density, and seedbank density, respectively, over the 10-year study period. Excluding IRH3, the organic weed control treatments (IRV, IRF, and IRVF) reduced seedling weeds, mature weeds, and seedbank density by an average of 91.22%, 93.97%, and 71.96%, respectively, while increasing rice yields by 16.59% compared to H3. During the initial 4 years, the high weed density rendered the three organic treatments ineffective, necessitating an average of 39 h of manual weeding per hectare per year to ensure economic viability. Using exponential model fittings, weed densities of 30 plants·m⁻² and seedbank densities of 65,000 seeds·m⁻² were established as theoretical intervention thresholds for additional manual weeding, below which all the aforementioned organic methods could effectively control weeds without further manual weeding. Therefore, we propose that these IR-based treatments can be integrated as primary methods into weed control programs for organic rice production, while complementing other weed control approaches.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"46 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147709122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Precision planting of cereal rye cover crop improves sweet corn yield and farm benefits","authors":"Gulcin Sener Guzel,&nbsp;Osman Guzel,&nbsp;Mustafa Guzel,&nbsp;Eric C. Brevik,&nbsp;Oluwaseun Ola,&nbsp;Amir Sadeghpour","doi":"10.1007/s13593-026-01095-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-026-01095-w","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Including cereal rye (<i>Secale cereale</i> L.) in sweet corn (<i>Zea mays</i> L.) production systems provides environmental and soil benefits. However, cereal rye often decreases sweet corn yield and thus farm profit. A novel approach to reduce this negative effect is precision planting of cereal rye, which skips the sweet corn row to minimize crop interactions, potentially increasing nitrogen (N) availability, and reducing negative effects of cereal rye on sweet corn. A four-site-yr trial was conducted during the 2022-2024 growing seasons, the first known evaluation of precision-planted cereal rye compared to a no-cover crop control and solid-planted cereal rye. The study evaluated (i) cereal rye morphology, biomass production and its quality, (ii) sweet corn plant population, morphology, and marketable yield, (iii) sweet corn quality traits, and (iv) soil nitrate-N (NO₃-N) dynamics and leaching potential. Our results indicated that precision planting had similar morphology, biomass yield (2735 kg ha^-1 for precision planting vs. 3011 kg ha^-1 for solid planting), and C:N ratio (48.2 for precision planting vs. 53.4 for solid planting) to the solid planting of cereal rye. Sweet corn plant population was similar among all treatments. Sweet corn marketable yield was significantly higher in precision planting (16841 kg ha^-1) compared to no-cover crop control (13914 kg ha^-1), while solid planting (14721 kg ha^-1) showed no significant difference from either of the two other treatments. Higher marketable yield was mainly due to moisture conservation by precision planting with limited impact on N immobilization during sweet corn growth. There were no differences among treatments for Brix %. Including both cereal rye treatments reduced N availability during and especially at the end of the season, minimizing NO₃-N loss potential. We recommend growers utilize precision planting as a novel alternative to solid planting to ensure sweet corn production while minimizing the NO₃-N loss potential.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"46 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2026-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13593-026-01095-w.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147560090","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}