Agronomy for Sustainable Development最新文献

{"title":"Alternate wetting and drying irrigation with field aged biochar may enhance water and rice productivity","authors":"Luis Vicente,&nbsp;David Peña,&nbsp;Damián Fernández,&nbsp;Ángel Albarrán,&nbsp;José Manuel Rato-Nunes,&nbsp;Antonio López-Piñeiro","doi":"10.1007/s13593-024-01000-3","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-024-01000-3","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Rice is traditionally cultivated worldwide under continuous flooding irrigation. However, in Mediterranean environments, there has recently been a decline in the area of rice cultivation in several producing regions where water supplies for this crop cannot always be guaranteed. Therefore, it is necessary to identify alternative crop management strategies that improve water-use efficiency in order to ensure the sustainability of rice production. It has been postulated that rice production under alternate wetting and drying (AWD) irrigation requires less water than flooding. However, the effects of the AWD system on rice yield components remain unclear, with different trends observed. It has been suggested that the soil properties are a crucial factor in this regard. In fact, drops in rice yields under AWD have been attributed to the low soil organic matter content. Consequently, the incorporation of organic amendments could offset this organic matter deficit, and the subsequent enhancement in rice productivity might also ensure its sustainability in areas where water availability is scarce. This study is the first to analyse how the soils properties, rice yields components, and water productivity were influenced by fresh and field aged biochar applied to rice soils under conventional flooding and AWD using two-threshold (mild and severe). The results showed that the transition from flood management to AWD management has had a significant impact on soil properties and rice yields, though this was dependent on the threshold. Consequently, yield losses occurred under severe AWD conditions in comparison to the flooded systems. Nevertheless, the use of holm oak biochar was found to enhance rice yields under AWD systems, particularly under severe conditions and following the field ageing process. Thus, the combined use of biochar and AWD may be a sustainable strategy to enhance water productivity, which is one of the main objectives in the rice crop.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"45 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13593-024-01000-3.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991499","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":"The changing role of livestock in agrarian systems: a historical and multifunctional perspective from southern India","authors":"Charlotte Hemingway,&nbsp;Laurent Ruiz,&nbsp;Mathieu Vigne,&nbsp;Claire Aubron","doi":"10.1007/s13593-024-00999-9","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-024-00999-9","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Farm animals are often lumped together into a single “livestock” entity, reduced to the production of milk and meat and accused of being the cause of major environmental disruptions. However, livestock farming systems are highly diverse, and the functions of livestock encompass multiple dimensions. Based on the methods of comparative agriculture and the quantification of animal labor energy on farms, we explore the changing roles of livestock in a semi-arid area of southern India from the 1950s to the present day. We provide a typology of farms that reveals the evolution of agronomic, economic, food and power supply functions of livestock according to the social diversity of farms of the study area. This study provides key insights to nuance livestock debates: (i) livestock serves a wide range of functions beyond mere food production, (ii) livestock remains necessary for agricultural production despite most agronomic and power supply functions having been impaired by motorized mechanization and the use of synthetic fertilizers, (iii) crop-livestock integration has declined at farm level but has strengthened between farms at area level, (iv) livestock is neither an attribute of the rich nor the poor. This research, therefore, highlights the complexity of livestock farming systems. It combines historical, biophysical, social and ethnographic perspectives with descriptions of unique livestock-related practices that could improve the sustainability of agriculture.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"45 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991500","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":"Analyzing unexploitable, agronomic, and non-agronomic yield gaps in irrigated barley growing areas of arid and frost-prone regions from Iran","authors":"Mohammad Reza Rahimi,&nbsp;Reza Deihimfard,&nbsp;Omid Noori","doi":"10.1007/s13593-024-01002-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-024-01002-1","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Barley (<i>Hordeum vulgare</i> L.) is one of the most important staple crops grown to produce feed for animals worldwide as well as in Iran with considerable surface in the arid and frost-prone climates. The yield gap analysis is an important topic for researchers worldwide as it aims to identify the factors influencing the gap between actual and potential yields and to enhance food security. To date, almost no long-term assessments have been focused on the barley yield gap analysis for the arid and semi-arid environments, particularly categorizing yield gap. In the current study, we therefore calibrated the APSIM-Barley model for three irrigated barley cultivars, validated the model using 31 field experiment reports, and applied it to simulate long-term (1989 to 2019) yields under eight production levels in eight major barley growing locations of Iran (Arak, Hamedan, Kabudarahang, Marvdasht, Neyshabour, Sabzevar, Saveh, and Shiraz). This is the first time that barley yield gaps are categorized into unexploitable, agronomic, and non-agronomic ones in Iran. The results revealed a huge difference between potential and actual yields (on average, 5.4 t ha⁻¹ yield gap) across the studied locations indicating that the farmers could achieve only 38.6% of the potential yield. Yield gap values varied over locations and seasons. Unexploitable, agronomic, and non-agronomic yield gaps in the studied locations averaged 26.7%, 55.9%, and 17.4% of total yield gap, respectively. The major part of the agronomic yield gap in the studied locations was owing to water limitation, which accounted for ~ 40% of the agronomic yield gap, followed by other agronomic (30%), frost-limited (15.8%), cultivar-limited (13.7%), and sowing date-limited (10.4%) yield gaps. Our findings showed that by improving agronomic management practices, particularly water management and farmers’ non-agronomic conditions, the current yield gaps could be reduced considerably in arid and frost-affected locations.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"45 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142976609","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":"Possibilistic pathways and decision-making for goal achievement in integrated agritourism","authors":"Alice De Lapparent,&nbsp;Rodolphe Sabatier,&nbsp;Sophie Martin,&nbsp;Cédric Gaucherel","doi":"10.1007/s13593-024-00995-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-024-00995-z","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Diversification of agricultural systems in order to integrate off-farm activities, like tourism, is a way to improve the overall system resilience while shaping a project that is eco-friendly as well as socially relevant. However, creating and maintaining such an integrated agritouristic system requires finding a way to organize individual and collective management of activities and commons in order to articulate the founding goals and values with day-to-day functioning. Current modeling tools are limited in the number of aspects they can integrate because of data requirement and because of the high number of dimensions that it involves. In this study, we characterize a case study of integrated agritourism possible pathways leading to a target corresponding to the founding socio-ecological goals of its stakeholders. We propose to build an innovative exploratory model representing the socio-ecological dynamics of an integrated agritouristic system following the qualitative and possibilistic Ecological Discrete-Event Network (EDEN) framework. The model outputs revealed that pathways leading to the target exist and can be more or less straightforward. However, the ability to reach the target can also be lost after a few steps due to a set of biophysical reactions and management decisions affecting sensitive states. Some of these pathways ultimately lead to an agritouristic system that could be considered fully functional but unable to fulfill the socio-ecological goals of its stakeholders. A form of path dependency emerges from these results: transitions involving one or a subset of activities can lead the whole system towards an irreversible and undesirable pathway. It results from a high level of interdependency between the activities. Identifying such lock-in effects can be a first step towards co-constructed path-breaking.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"45 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142929447","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":"Wheat cultivar mixtures enhance the delivery of agroecosystem services compared to monocultures under contrasted tillage intensities and fertilization","authors":"Alba Tous-Fandos,&nbsp;Daniel Bragg,&nbsp;José M. Blanco-Moreno,&nbsp;Lourdes Chamorro-Lorenzo,&nbsp;F. Xavier Sans","doi":"10.1007/s13593-024-00996-y","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-024-00996-y","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Wheat cultivar mixtures provide a more complex and functional cropping system than monocultures. Their functionality may result in the delivery of agroecosystem services. However, research on cultivar mixture performance has mainly been done in controlled environments. Greenhouses and laboratory experiments do not account for environmental or agronomic factors that may influence the polyculture’s functionality. To fill this research gap, we set up a novel strip-split-block experimental design with three factors (wheat treatment, tillage, and fertilization) in a field long-term trial. We assessed the performance of the modern wheat cultivar Florence-Aurora and the traditional cultivars Xeixa (<i>Triticum aestivum</i> L. subsp. <i>aestivum</i>) and Forment (<i>Triticum turgidum</i> L. subsp. <i>durum</i>) monocultures and their mixture in providing aphid and weed control and promoting crop yield under contrasting tillage practices (moldboard ploughing vs. chisel ploughing) and fertilization (farmyard manure applied or not applied). We analyzed aphid abundance, number of aphids per tiller, parasitism rate, weed abundance and richness, and crop yield. Additionally, we examined wheat establishment, cover, phenology, and height for cultivar characterization. We observed that soil management practices affected some aspects of the cropping system. The wheat cultivars differed in their aphid susceptibility and weed suppression ability, with Florence-Aurora being less suppressant to weeds and more prone to aphid infestation. Most remarkably, our study shows for the first time that mixing wheat cultivars with distinguished traits enhances associational resistance for aphid and weed control. These benefits were specifically important under high weed infestations generated by reduced tillage. Moreover, the yield of Florence-Aurora monoculture and the mixture was found to be influenced by tillage and fertilization. Our study underscores how soil management practices impact the functionality of cultivar mixtures. This emphasizes the need for further field research to better understand the complexity of farming conditions that influence the delivery of agroecosystem services by cultivar mixtures.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"45 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13593-024-00996-y.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142929485","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":"Conversion of cropland monoculture to agroforestry increases methane uptake","authors":"Guodong Shao,&nbsp;Guntars O. Martinson,&nbsp;Marife D. Corre,&nbsp;Jie Luo,&nbsp;Dan Niu,&nbsp;Edzo Veldkamp","doi":"10.1007/s13593-024-00997-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-024-00997-x","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In temperate Europe, agroforestry practice is gaining interest due to its potential to enhance carbon (C) sequestration and mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in agriculture. To date, the effects of agroforestry on the spatial and temporal dynamics of soil carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) fluxes are still poorly quantified. Here we present a systematic comparison of soil CO₂ and CH₄ fluxes between agroforestry and monoculture cropland systems for the first time, based on two-year field measurements at three sites on different soils in Germany. Each site had an adjacent alley cropping agroforestry system and monoculture, and the agroforestry was established on former monoculture croplands 1 to 11 years prior to this study. We found that area-weighted soil CO₂ emissions from agroforestry (3.5−8.1 Mg C ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹) were comparable to monocultures (3.4−9.8 Mg C ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹), whereas area-weighted agroforestry generally had higher soil CH₄ uptake (0.4−1.3 kg C ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹) compared to monocultures (0.1−1.2 kg C ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹). Seasonal variations of soil CO₂ and CH₄ fluxes were strongly regulated by soil temperature and moisture, and the spatial variations were influenced by soil texture. Our results suggest that conversion of monoculture cropland to long-term alley cropping agroforestry system could be considered as a sustainable agriculture practice for its great potential for mitigating CH₄ emissions.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"45 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13593-024-00997-x.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142879929","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":"Introducing intermediate wheatgrass as a perennial grain crop into farming systems: insights into the decision-making process of pioneer farmers","authors":"Christelle Ginot,&nbsp;Camille Bathellier,&nbsp;Christophe David,&nbsp;Walter A. H. Rossing,&nbsp;Florian Celette,&nbsp;Olivier Duchene","doi":"10.1007/s13593-024-00993-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-024-00993-1","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The perennial grain intermediate wheatgrass (<i>Thinopyrum intermedium</i>, commercial name Kernza^TM) has been proposed as a diversification crop for producing forage and grain and providing ecosystem services to farmers. Although a few studies have addressed farmers’ interests in the crop, information is lacking about the links between farmers’ goals and crop management, i.e., how farmers aim at integrating this crop in their systems. Closing this gap, this paper analyzes for the first time the introduction of intermediate wheatgrass (IWG) from a farmer perspective, as a set of decision plans and goals. The overarching orientations of the farm and organization of the production system, referred as strategic decisions, interact with short-term crop management (i.e., tactical decisions) and farmers’ goals for IWG. In total, 17 individual semi-structured interviews and 2 collective crop management prototyping workshops in France were used to analyze farmers’ rationales as a function of their farm systems, agronomic constraints, and know-how. The study demonstrates that farmers’ interests in IWG revolved around multiple ecosystem services and financial returns. Three ideal-types of farms testing IWG emerged from the relationships between existing farming systems and goals for IWG. The strategic and tactical decisions regarding the integration and management of IWG were contingent on the farming systems, the goals for IWG, the farmers’ know-how, and their ability to mitigate risks. Implications for the future development of intermediate wheatgrass as a niche innovation are considered based on farmers’ points of view. This study provides insights into the ideas and concerns of French farmers regarding IWG and proposes a framework for discussing the introduction of a new crop in a farm system.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"44 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13593-024-00993-1.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142594784","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":"Enhancing ecosystem services through direct-seeded rice in middle Indo-Gangetic Plains: a comparative study of different rice establishment practices","authors":"Rachana Dubey,&nbsp;JS Mishra,&nbsp;Anup Das,&nbsp;GK Dinesh,&nbsp;N Jain,&nbsp;BP Bhatt,&nbsp;SP Poonia,&nbsp;A Ajay,&nbsp;S Mondal,&nbsp;S Kumar,&nbsp;AK Choudhary,&nbsp;Rakesh Kumar,&nbsp;A Upadhyaya,&nbsp;Andrew J. McDonald","doi":"10.1007/s13593-024-00992-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-024-00992-2","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Rice (<i>Oryza sativa</i> L.) is extensively cultivated in South Asia mostly under puddled transplanted conditions which are highly energy and water-intensive with low income and degraded soil properties. Off-late, alternative crop establishment practices such as direct seeded rice, system of rice intensification, and zero-till rice have gained importance as viable options for resilient farming. However, the valuation of these different rice systems in terms of ecosystem services is not systematically carried out. The research objective was to evaluate the ecosystem services of different rice establishment systems to determine their potential and importance as ecological assets and strive to find out the most productive establishment method while minimizing its effects on the natural resources, environment, and human health. A novel valuation approach was developed using an experimental and bottom-up method to assess the value of rice systems based on three aspects: provisioning, regulation and maintenance, and cultural services. To evaluate the ecosystem services of different rice establishment methods, 11 indicators were selected. The seven rice establishment methods evaluated were random-puddled transplanted rice, line- puddled transplanted rice, conventional till-machine transplanted rice, zero till-machine transplanted rice, system of rice intensification, conventional till, and zero till- direct seeded rice. The results revealed that the value of rice ecosystem services across establishment practices averaged US$ 9092 ha^-1 yr^-1. Direct seeded rice (zero till/conventional till) provided the highest ecosystem services at US$ 9491 ha^-1year^-1 and random puddled transplanted rice was lowest at US$ 8767 ha^-1 year^-1. Provisioning, regulation-maintenance, and cultural ecosystem services contributed 20.3,79.4, and 0.3% to the total ecosystem services value. The research emphasizes the favorable environmental attributes of direct seeded rice, which may be integrated into the policy framework for better decision making to guarantee the sustainability of the agri-food system in the mid-Indo-Gangetic regions.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"44 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142594785","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":"Beneficial soil fungi enhance tomato crop productivity and resistance to the leaf-mining pest Tuta absoluta in agronomic conditions","authors":"Zhivko Minchev,&nbsp;Beatriz Ramírez-Serrano,&nbsp;Laura Dejana,&nbsp;Ana S. Lee Díaz,&nbsp;Guadalupe Zitlalpopoca-Hernandez,&nbsp;Dimitri Orine,&nbsp;Haymanti Saha,&nbsp;Dimitra Papantoniou,&nbsp;Juan M. García,&nbsp;Alicia González-Céspedes,&nbsp;Paolina Garbeva,&nbsp;Nicole M. van Dam,&nbsp;Roxina Soler,&nbsp;David Giron,&nbsp;Ainhoa Martínez-Medina,&nbsp;Arjen Biere,&nbsp;Thure Hauser,&nbsp;Nicolai V. Meyling,&nbsp;Sergio Rasmann,&nbsp;María J. Pozo","doi":"10.1007/s13593-024-00991-3","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-024-00991-3","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Research has shown that soil-borne beneficial microorganisms can enhance plant growth, productivity, and resistance against pests and pathogens and could thus serve as a sustainable alternative to agrochemicals. To date, however, the effect of soil-beneficial microbes under commercial crop production has been little assessed. We here investigated the effect of root inoculation with nine well-characterized bacterial and fungal strains and two consortia on tomato performance under intensive tomato crop management practices. We measured the impact of these root inoculations on plant growth, fruit quality, yield, and pest and pathogen incidence. While most microbial strains showed weak effects, we found that the fungal strains <i>Trichoderma afroharzianum</i> T22 and <i>Funneliformis mosseae</i> significantly increased marketable tomato yield. Moreover, we found that inoculation with most of the fungal strains led to a significant reduction in the incidence of the devastating leaf-mining pest <i>Tuta absoluta</i>, while this effect was not observed for bacterial inoculants. In addition, we found that microbial inoculations did not impact the incidence of introduced natural pest enemies, supporting their compatibility with well-established integrated pest management strategies in horticulture. In summary, the observed general positive effects of soil microbes on tomato yield and resistance reinforce the move toward broader adoption of microbial inoculants in future crop production, ultimately improving agricultural sustainability.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"44 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13593-024-00991-3.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142555201","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":"Straw mulch and nitrogen fertilizer: A viable green solution for enhanced maize benefits and reduced emissions in China","authors":"Huihui Wei,&nbsp;Li Zhang,&nbsp;Rongzhu Qin,&nbsp;Zeyu Zhao,&nbsp;Yalan Huang,&nbsp;Guojun Sun,&nbsp;Matthew Tom Harrison,&nbsp;Feng Zhang","doi":"10.1007/s13593-024-00988-y","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13593-024-00988-y","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Against the backdrop of global warming, the agricultural sector grapples with the dual challenge of safeguarding food security while fulfilling carbon neutrality. Currently, although nitrogen fertilizer and mulch use to enhance maize yields is well-documented, systematic evaluations are lacking in the carbon neutrality potential and holistic benefits, including greenhouse gas (GHG) implications, associated with these strategies. Here, using the calibrated DeNitrification-DeComposition (DNDC) model, we conducted a long-term simulation (1980−2019) incorporating various scenarios of nitrogen fertilizer (N₁: conventional nitrogen fertilizer; N_0.7: 70% conventional nitrogen fertilizer) and mulch (CK: no-mulch; PM: plastic film mulch; SM: straw mulch), resulting in a baseline scenario (CKN₁) and five mitigation scenarios (CKN_0.7, PMN₁, PMN_0.7, SMN₁, SMN_0.7). We revealed an average net global warming potential during the maize growing season of 5293 kg CO₂ eq ha⁻¹, with the most GHG derived from N₂O (53%). Considering GHG costs, the net environmental and economic benefits in maize amounted to 5089 CNY ha⁻¹. Presently, Hainan, Henan, Liaoning, and Jilin provinces exhibit a state of low net global warming potential and high net environmental and economic benefits in maize cultivation. Of the mitigation scenarios, only SMN₁ concurrently reduced GHG emissions (− 59%) and amplified net environmental and economic benefits (+ 21%) in China. Our results, which provide the first calculation of the combined benefits of mulch and nitrogen fertilizer including GHG costs, not only underscore the immense potential of mulch for enabling carbon neutrality, but also offer valuable insights for policymakers and industry in selecting suitable mulch techniques for agricultural production.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7721,"journal":{"name":"Agronomy for Sustainable Development","volume":"44 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142487276","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}