Diversified Forage Cropping Systems and Their Implications on Resilience and Productivity

Abstract

Plant diversity is associated with resilient ecosystems. Loss of plant biodiversity triggered by anthropogenic and climatic factors jeopardizes environmental stability and sustainable forage production. The understanding of biodiversity mechanisms and functional traits of species can help to design forage production systems to buffer against perturbations. Resilience and productivity are linked to plant species characteristics and interactions that enable them to recover from adverse conditions and compensate for the loss of susceptible species. Benefits of diversified crops including enhanced carbon assimilation, nitrogen fixation, and turnover are transferred to soil microbes which in return contribute to resilience against drought and poor soil fertility. In the absence of disturbances, these mechanisms are credited for stability and climax ecosystems. Cultivated systems are more fragile because management interferes with many functions while maintaining few. Strategies that sustain an entire range of functions can increase production regardless of climatic and management factors. This has been demonstrated in binary mixtures of cool season grasses including meadow bromegrass (Bromus biebersteinii Roem. & Schult.), orchardgrass (Dactylis glomerata L.), smooth bromegrass (Bromus inermis Leyss.), and intermediate wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium (Host) Barkworth & D.R. Dewey) with alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.). Suitable combinations of perennial species and cultivars bred for compatible traits can enhance resilience and productivity in a wide range of ecosystems.

Plant community responses to integrating livestock into a reduced‐till organic cropping system

“…The negative ecological effects of high input agricultural systems have amplified interest in organic cropping systems. Organic cropping systems promote crop production and soil fertility through ecosystem processes such as nutrient cycling, crop–weed competition, pollination, and by biologically based pest regulation (Altieri 1999, Tilman et al 2002, Isbell et al 2017, Islam and Ashilenje 2018). Maintaining agroecosystem biodiversity is vital to sustaining these processes (Altieri 1999, Jordan and Vatovec 2004, Robertson et al 2014, Dainese et al 2019) and is shaped by agronomic management (Booth and Swanton 2002, Smith and Mortensen 2017); therefore, it is imperative to understand the unique effects of specific organic management practices.…”

Alfalfa Established Successfully in Intercropping with Corn in the Midwest US

“…The removal of perennial crops in the crop rotations by anthropogenic and climatic factors in the Corn Belt region in the USA has resulted in reduced biodiversity, increased soil and nutrients losses, and reduced water quality [1][2][3]. Less diverse cropping systems are more vulnerable to abiotic and biotic stresses [4][5][6].…”

“…Less diverse cropping systems are more vulnerable to abiotic and biotic stresses [4][5][6]. A more diverse, resilient and stable cropping system has the ability to persist over time with minimal variability in productivity over the years, even if subjected to disturbance or adverse conditions such as drought [3]. Under future climate scenarios, it is estimated that more diversified rotations, including alfalfa, can mitigate crop water stress and increase in soil organic carbon [7].…”

“…Perennial crops such as alfalfa reduce annual disturbance of soil, which affects many biogeochemical cycles that are key to provide resilience and stability to agroecosystems [3]. Alfalfa provides long-term sustainability contributing to the soil health of cropping systems by affording nitrogen credits to the following crops [8,9].…”

Towards a Trait-Based Approach to Potentiate Yield under Drought in Legume-Rich Annual Forage Mixtures

“…Complementary plant architecture can bring advantages in the caption of solar energy for photosynthesis [ 21 ]. The plant growth habit, leaf arrangement, leaf angle, or branching strongly influence the interception of light and the radiation partitioning, which can lead to a complementary use of light by plant mixtures [ 22 ]. In fact, as already pointed out with the R/S differences, legume and grass species prioritized shoot or root development in opposite ways.…”