Agronomy for Sustainable Development最新文献

{"title":"Exploring the logics of farmers’ equipment management for species mixtures: case studies from France","authors":"Fouillet Esther,&nbsp;Laurent Bedoussac,&nbsp;Nassim Hamiti,&nbsp;Annabelle Revel,&nbsp;Chloé Salembier","doi":"10.1007/s13593-026-01110-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-026-01110-0","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Species mixtures are one of the levers for sustainable agriculture, as they can allow the reduction of environmental impacts while maintaining yields. Farmers face challenges in implementing them, however — notably technical difficulties and constraints related to cultivation and post-harvest sorting equipment. This study explores farmers’ agricultural equipment fleet management logics in the context of arable species mixture cultivation, a blind spot in the scientific literature. Our research methodology draws on the innovation tracking approach. Data were collected through interviews with 13 farmers cultivating species mixtures across France. We examined: (i) the characteristics and management of mixtures, as farmers consider them when selecting and using equipment, (ii) the technical features of the equipment used — including modifications and farmer-driven design, and (iii) farmers’ overall logic for managing their equipment fleets. The results reveal six categories of species mixtures, distinguished by their spatial arrangement and sowing depth, both closely linked to equipment use. Farmers use a wide diversity of equipment, often modified or repurposed to suit specific mixtures, such as seed drills adapted to sow different species at distinct depths. Three main management logics were identified among the interviewees: (i) minimizing costs through existing equipment reuse, (ii) adapting equipment to the biological characteristics of species mixtures, and (iii) making equipment choices based on local resources. Here we demonstrate how the management of agricultural equipment is a central lever for species mixture cultivation. This study offers new insights into equipment for agroecological farming practices, providing reflexive guidance for researchers, advisers, and equipment manufacturers involved in the transition toward more sustainable agriculture.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"46 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148172295","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":"Straw return enhances phosphorus availability via divergent effects on soil pH: a meta-analysis","authors":"Yanling Guo,&nbsp;Zongxiang Zhang,&nbsp;Fei Liang,&nbsp;Wenchao Cao,&nbsp;Yajing Wang,&nbsp;Jingsheng Chen,&nbsp;Jingheng Guo","doi":"10.1007/s13593-026-01109-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-026-01109-7","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Enhancing soil phosphorus (P) availability is crucial for the sustainable utilization of nonrenewable P fertilizer resources. Straw return was found to influence soil P availability; however, its magnitude and governing factors across large geographical areas remain largely uncertain. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a global meta-analysis of 477 field experiments from 181 sites worldwide. We showed that straw return significantly enhanced soil available P and crop P-uptake by 12.8% and 15.0%, respectively. Soil pH was identified as the most important factor. With increasing soil pH, both response indices decreased in acidic soils, whereas they increased in alkaline soils. This concave relationship was attributed to the fact that straw return increases pH in acidic soils but decreases it in alkaline soils. Our study presents the first integrative assessment of straw return-induced enhancement in soil P availability at a global scale, providing new insights into the sustainable utilization of crop straw and P fertilizer resources.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"46 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148172296","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":"A framework for assessing multi-hazard risk dynamics: application to South African maize production","authors":"Sophie Grosse,&nbsp;Tristan Berchoux,&nbsp;Hatem Belhouchette,&nbsp;Mohammade Check,&nbsp;Nicolas Baghdadi","doi":"10.1007/s13593-026-01108-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-026-01108-8","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Climate change amplifies extreme weather events, posing critical risks to South African agriculture, where rainfed farming and climatic variability heighten vulnerability. Maize, the country’s staple crop, is sensitive to compounded hazards. However, current risk assessments largely consider hazards in isolation and often fail to capture their interactions across time, space, and crop development stages, limiting their usefulness for decision-making. Therefore, this paper presents a novel risk-scoring system within a multi-hazard assessment framework applied to South African maize production. This system integrates irrigation-defined clusters, climatic indices, and crop-stage-specific dynamics. Climatic hazards—including droughts, heatwaves, cold spells, heavy rainfall, diseases, and frost—were profiled, and risk scores calculated from their correlations with yield. Statistical models, linking spatio-temporal yield variability to multi-hazard risk scores, captured how hazard interactions compound across regions, irrigation levels, and phenological stages. Results show that yield losses are not driven by the number of hazards occurring each year, but by specific hazard interactions across phenological stages. Yield gaps between rainfed and moderately irrigated systems narrow from 41% at a risk score of 0 (lowest) to 9% at 8 (highest), suggesting that moderate irrigation cannot fully mitigate high risks. Yield gaps between rainfed and highly irrigated systems widen from 47% to 71%, indicating greater stability under higher risk conditions. Normalized average risk scores (0–1) were lower in highly irrigated systems (0.13–0.14), moderate in moderately irrigated systems (0.23–0.36), and highly variable in rainfed systems (0.00–0.90). In rainfed systems, all hazard profiles negatively impact yields, with the drought-heatwave combination presenting the highest risks. While irrigation reduces drought stress, it can also amplify challenges under combined heat and high-moisture conditions by promoting waterlogging and disease outbreaks. These findings identify the most critical hazard interactions, across irrigation levels and growth stages, supporting more targeted and context-specific risk management strategies.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"46 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2026-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148009008","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":"Soil-health frameworks in agri-food systems. A review","authors":"Powell Mponela,&nbsp;Vimbayi Grace Petrova Chimonyo,&nbsp;Mazvita Chiduwa,&nbsp;Righteous Kachali,&nbsp;Joyce Grevulo-Minofu,&nbsp;Cleopatra Kawanga,&nbsp;Santiago Lopez-Ridaura,&nbsp;Sieglinde Snapp","doi":"10.1007/s13593-026-01111-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-026-01111-z","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Soil health is central to agroecological transitions, yet guidance for integrating it into agri-food system design and monitoring remains fragmented. Institutions increasingly use frameworks to define indicators, guide interventions, and report progress against climate, biodiversity, and food-security agendas. However, to our knowledge, there is no integrative soil health framework which coherently links biophysical diagnostics, socio-institutional enablers, and multiscale accountability. This leaves critical gaps in design, sequencing, and measurement of agroecological transitions. Here we review how soil health is operationalized within agroecology and agri-food systems and translate these patterns into an actionable programming guide. We reviewed 64 frameworks and extracted 652 indicators across 12 agroecological principles to build a framework-by-principle evidence matrix. Frameworks were classified by use-orientation (theory, practice, analysis), and indicator thematic profiles were analyzed using hierarchical clustering with adaptive branch detection. The major findings are as follows: (1) framework evolution exhibits four chronological waves with shifts from conceptual foundations to operational measurement and outcome reporting, alongside changes in global and regional agenda setting and a rising demand for comparable indicators; (2) clustering identified five soil health design domains separating biophysical and socio-economic principles and revealing stable micro-constellations beyond earlier pathway framing. These include soil management and input stewardship, soil-health assessment, agroecological and ecosystem-based, integrated landscape and livelihood, and policy- and outcome-based. These findings were translated into a sequenced, multi-domain programming architecture that operationalizes complementarity across diagnostics, stewardship implementation, ecosystem safeguards, landscape–livelihood embedding, and iterative learning, thereby closing the gaps between farm practices, governance mechanisms, and outcome monitoring for soil health.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"46 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2026-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13593-026-01111-z.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147938701","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":"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}