Europe's agriculture is highly specialized, dependent on external inputs and responsible for negative environmental impacts. Legume crops are grown on less than 2% of the arable land and more than 70% of the demand for protein feed supplement is imported from overseas. The integration of legumes into cropping systems has the potential to contribute to the transition to a more resource-efficient...

Despite their key roles in agroecosystems, species diversity of arable plants is being severely reduced by agricultural intensification, although it remains unclear whether functional diversity is affected in a similar way. We analyzed the response of four functional traits of arable plants (specific leaf area, canopy height, seed mass and flowering onset) to agricultural intensification in Med...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The duration of the plant life cycle is an important attribute that determines fitness and coexistence of weeds in arable fields. It depends on the timing of two key life-history traits: time from seed dispersal to germination and time from germination to flowering. These traits are components of the time to reproduction. Dormancy results in reduced and delayed germination, ...

Sulphur K-edge X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy was used to quantify S species in humic substance extracts from ten soils from the UK, China and New Zealand, which differ in land use and agricultural management. XANES spectroscopy showed the presence of most reduced (sulphides, disulphides, thiols and thiophenes), intermediate (sulphoxides and sulphonates) and highly ox...

In this paper, we present an overview of several challenges in arable farming that are well suited for research by the control engineering society. We discuss global needs these related to as relation future applications farming. For each opportunities provide concrete and detailed questions. Particular attention is paid management resources sensors farms. The objective writing paper further en...