Crop diversification can contribute to disease risk control in sustainable biofuels production

Smith, Val H.; McBride, Robert; Shurin, Jonathan B.; Bever, James D.; Crews, Timothy E.; Tilman, David

doi:10.1890/150094

Cited by 24 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Crop diversification (CD) : crop diversification (CD) refers to more diverse crop rotations, including the integration of legumes and high‐value crops into the cropping system. Studies show that it potentially reduces the incidence of weeds and pests, minimizes disease risk (Smith et al ., ) and improves soil fertility (Hossain et al ., ). It enhances resilience to multiple environmental stresses.…”

Section: Study Area Data and Description Of Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors affecting the adoption of multiple climate‐smart agricultural practices in the Indo‐Gangetic Plains of India

Aryal

Rahut

Maharjan

et al. 2018

Natural Resources Forum

119

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Climate change poses a major threat to agricultural production and food security in India, and climate‐smart agriculture (CSA) is crucial in addressing the potential impacts. Using survey data from 1,267 farm households in 25 villages from Bihar and Haryana in the Indo‐Gangetic Plains, this study analyzes the factors that determine the probability and level of adoption of multiple CSA practices, including seeds of stress‐tolerant varieties, minimum tillage, laser land leveling, site‐specific nutrient management and crop diversification. We applied a multivariate probit model for the simultaneous multiple adoption decisions, and ordered probit models for assessing the factors affecting the level of adoption. The adoption of the various CSA practices is interrelated, whereas several factors, including household characteristics, plot characteristics, market access and major climate risks are found to affect the probability and level of CSA adoption. Climate‐smart agriculture (CSA) adoption and its intensity also vary significantly between eastern Bihar, which is relatively poor and densely populated, and north‐western Haryana. Engaging multiple stakeholders such as farmers, agricultural institutions, agricultural service providers and concerned government departments at the local level is crucial for the large‐scale uptake of CSA. The study, therefore, calls for agricultural policy reforms so that most of the issues related to the uptake of CSA can be adequately addressed.

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Section: Study Area Data and Description Of Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors affecting the adoption of multiple climate‐smart agricultural practices in the Indo‐Gangetic Plains of India

Aryal

Rahut

Maharjan

et al. 2018

Natural Resources Forum

119

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, plant diversity is also an important consideration. Ecologists have firmly established that single species or monoculture plantings of a crop will eventually decline in productivity due to pathogen load or insect herbivory [104][105][106]. Growing different plant functional groups together (e.g., legumes and grasses) can also result in greater productivity due to niche partitioning or complementarity [107].…”

Section: The Role Of Diversity In Improving Sommentioning

confidence: 99%

What Agriculture Can Learn from Native Ecosystems in Building Soil Organic Matter: A Review

2017

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Over the last century, researchers and practitioners with diverse backgrounds have articulated the importance of improving soil organic matter (SOM) contents in agricultural soils. More recently, climate change scientists interested in CO 2 sinks, and agroecologists interested in ecological intensification have converged on the goal of building SOM stocks in croplands. The challenge is that agriculture itself is responsible for dramatic losses of SOM. When grassland or forest ecosystems are first converted to agriculture, multiple mechanisms result in SOM declines of between 20% and 70%. Two of the most important mechanisms are the reduction in organic matter inputs from roots following the replacement of perennial vegetation with annual crop species, and increases in microbial respiration when tillage breaks open soil aggregates exposing previously protected organic matter. Many agricultural practices such as conservation tillage and integration of cover crops have been shown to achieve some degree of SOM improvement, but in general adoption of these practices falls short of accumulating the SOM stocks maintained by grasslands, forests or other native ecosystems that agriculture replaced. Two of the overarching reasons why native terrestrial ecosystems have achieved greater soil organic matter levels than human agroecosystems are because they direct a greater percentage of productivity belowground in perennial roots, and they do not require frequent soil disturbance. A growing body of research including that presented in this review suggests that developing perennial grain agroecosystems may hold the greatest promise for agriculture to approach the SOM levels that accumulate in native ecosystems. We present calculations that estimate potential soil organic carbon accumulation rates in fields converted from annual to perennial grains of between 0.13 and 1.70 t ha −1 year −1 .

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“…Algae are a promising source of renewable biofuels, but the challenge of achieving multifunctionality has limited the commercial‐scale cultivation of algal feedstocks in open ponds (Department of Energy, ; National Research Council, ). Under conditions used for mass cultivation, algae have low productivity and lipid content relative to their potential (Sheehan, Dunahay, Benemann, & Roessler, ; Williams & Laurens, ); exhibit low temporal stability and frequent crashes (Beyter et al., ); and are invaded by pathogens and unwanted species (McBride et al., ; Smith et al., ). Intensive agricultural practices have not overcome the problems faced by algal feedstock cultivation (National Research Council, ) and would likely exacerbate environmental problems if implemented at large scales (Foley et al., ; Wiens, Fargione, & Hill, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, the effect of biodiversity on multifunctionality is distinct from the positive effects of biodiversity on productivity (Hooper et al., ), temporal stability (Gross et al., ; Hautier et al., ), and resistance to invasive species and pathogens (Mitchell, Tilman, & Groth, ; Shea & Chesson, ). Based on this body of evidence, numerous papers in the last decade have proposed that multispecies polycultures of algae could be used to improve several aspects of multifunctionality in biofuel cultivation, including productivity (Shurin et al., ), biomass characteristics (Newby et al., ; Stockenreiter, Graber, Haupt, & Stibor, ), temporal stability (Beyter et al., ; Nalley, Stockenreiter, & Litchman, ), and resisting causes of population crashes (Smith & McBride, ; Smith et al., ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biodiversity improves the ecological design of sustainable biofuel systems

et al. 2018

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For algal biofuels to become a commercially viable and sustainable means of decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, growers are going to need to design feedstocks that achieve at least three characteristics simultaneously as follows: attain high yields; produce high quality biomass; and remain stable through time. These three qualities have proven difficult to achieve simultaneously under the ideal conditions of the laboratory, much less under field conditions (e.g., outdoor culture ponds) where feedstocks are exposed to highly variable conditions and the crop is vulnerable to invasive species, disease, and grazers. Here, we show that principles from ecology can be used to improve the design of feedstocks and to optimize their potential for "multifunctionality." We performed a replicated experiment to test these predictions under outdoor conditions. Using 80 ponds of 1,100 L each, we tested the hypotheses that polycultures would outperform monocultures in terms of the following functions: biomass production, yield of biocrude from biomass, temporal stability, resisting population crashes, and resisting invasions by unwanted species. Overall, species richness improved stability, biocrude yield, and resistance to invasion. While this suggests that polycultures could outperform monocultures on average, invasion resistance was the only function where polycultures outperformed the best single species in the experiment. Due to tradeoffs among different functions that we measured, no species or polyculture was able to maximize all functions simultaneously. However, diversity did enhance the potential for multifunctionality-the most diverse polyculture performed more functions at higher levels than could any of the monocultures. These results are a key finding for ecological design of sustainable biofuel systems because they show that while a monoculture may be the optimal choice for maximizing short-term biomass production, polycultures can offer a more stable crop of the desired species over longer periods of time.

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Crop diversification can contribute to disease risk control in sustainable biofuels production

Abstract: Crop diversification and disease management VH Smith et al. 562www.frontiersinecology.org

Cited by 24 publications

References 45 publications

Factors affecting the adoption of multiple climate‐smart agricultural practices in the Indo‐Gangetic Plains of India

Factors affecting the adoption of multiple climate‐smart agricultural practices in the Indo‐Gangetic Plains of India

What Agriculture Can Learn from Native Ecosystems in Building Soil Organic Matter: A Review

Biodiversity improves the ecological design of sustainable biofuel systems

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