BACKGROUND Harnessing beneficial microbes presents a promising strategy to optimize plant growth and agricultural sustainability. Little is known to which extent and how specifically soil and plant microbiomes can be manipulated through different cropping practices. Here, we investigated soil and wheat root microbial communities in a cropping system experiment consisting of conventional and org...

Soil biological quality can affect key soil functions that support food production and environmental quality. The objective of this study was to determine the effects of management and time on soil biological quality in contrasting dryland cropping systems at eight locations in the North American Great Plains. Alternative (ALT) cropping systems were characterized by greater cropping intensity (...

Multiple cropping systems provide more harvest security for farmers, allow for crop intensification and furthermore influence ground cover, soil erosion, albedo, soil chemical properties, pest infestation and the carbon sequestration potential. We identify the traditional sequential cropping systems in ten sub-Saharan African countries from a survey dataset of more than 8600 households. We find...

Indian landmass with 1.45% of the world’s total geographical area accounts for approximately 2.7–5.5% to the global NPP estimates with agriculture contributing to more than sixty percent. This paper reports the spatio-temporal pattern of agricultural NPP in India using SPOT VGT 10-day composite NPP product for 2002-03 to 2004-05 agricultural years. Detailed analysis was carried out for the Indo...

To preserve the quality of surface water, official French regulations require farmers to keep a minimum acreage of grassland, especially bordering rivers. These agro-environmental measures do not account for the circulation of water within the catchment. This paper examines whether it is possible to design with the farmers agri-environmental measures at field and catchment scale to prevent soil...

For a cropping system to be sustainable, should not only the soil nitrogen (N) content be preserved but also the N runoff be minimised. Finding a simple but robust way to estimate N runoff would thus be a great advantage when evaluating cropping systems. In this study all major N flows in six different cropping systems, each covering 0.18 ha of a separately pipe drained field lysimeter, located...

In the West African sub-region, intercropping is a critical element in cowpea product profiles. This study aimed to investigate impact of with pearl millet on genetic correlations, heritability, and response selection. Thirty-five genotypes one variety were used create three cropping patterns: sole cowpea, 1:1 (one row cowpea), 2:4 (two rows four cowpea). Split-plot experiments conducted for tw...

A field experiment was conducted on Chickpea-Mungbean-T.Aman cropping pattern at Pulses Research Sub-Station, Madaripur under Low Ganges River Floodplain Soils (AEZ-12) during 2007-08 and 2008-09 to find out the suitable fertilizer doses for this pattern. Four treatments were set up for each crop. For chickpea and mungbean, the treatments were T1=Recommended fertilizer dose as per FRG, 2005 BAR...

In recent decades, there have been substantial increases in crop production in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) as a result of higher yields, increased cropping intensity, expansion of irrigated cropping systems, and rainfed cropland expansion. Yet, to date much of the research focus of the impact of climate change on crop production in the coming decades has been on crop yield responses. In this study...