Effects of Previous Crop Management, Fertilization Regime and Water Supply on Potato Tuber Proteome and Yield

Abstract

There is increasing concern about the sustainability and environmental impacts of mineral fertilizer use in agriculture. Increased recycling of nutrients via the use of animal and green manures and fertilizers made from domestic organic waste may reduce reliance on mineral fertilizers. However, the relative availability of nutrients (especially nitrogen) is lower in organic compared to mineral fertilizers, which can result in significantly lower yields in nutrient demanding crops such as potato. It is therefore important to gain a better understanding of the factors affecting nutrient use efficiency (yield per unit fertilizer input) from organic fertilizers. Here we show that (a) previous crop management (organic vs. conventional fertilization and crop protection regimes), (b) organic fertilizer type and rate (composted cattle manure vs. composted chicken manure pellets) and (c) watering regimes (optimized and restricted) significantly affected leaf chlorophyll content, potato tuber N-concentration, proteome and yield. Protein inference by gel matching indicated several functional groups significantly affected by previous crop management and organic fertilizer type and rate, including stress/defense response, glycolysis and protein destination and storage. These results indicate genomic pathways controlling crop responses (nutrient use efficiency and yield) according to contrasting types and rates of organic fertilizers that can be linked to the respective encoding genes.

Higher antioxidant and lower cadmium concentrations and lower incidence of pesticide residues in organically grown crops: a systematic literature review and meta-analyses

“…rotation designs, irrigated or non-irrigated crop production, and level and type of animal manures used) and/or (2) focused on different crop species. This is not surprising as both genetic and environmental/agronomic factors are known to affect the concentrations of N, , , proteins, sugars, antioxidants/(poly)phenolics, Cd and pesticides in crops ( 7 , 9 – 12 , 20 , 47 – 52 , 62 ) . However, due to the lack of detailed information on agronomic and pedo-climatic background conditions in most of the available literature, it is currently not possible to quantify the relative contribution of genetic and environmental/agronomic sources of variation.…”

Integrated Soil and Crop Management in Organic Agriculture: A Logical Framework to Ensure Food Quality and Human Health?

“…Systematic reviews/meta-analyses and long-term field experiments have found that yields in organic farming systems are between 10 and 25% lower than the yield in intensive conventional production systems [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. However, the results from a long-term farming system comparison in the Netherlands suggest that the yield gap between organic and conventional farming diminishes over time, and that this coincides with higher nutrientuse efficiency and "spatial stability" in the organic system [17].…”

Selected Antioxidants in Organic vs. Conventionally Grown Apple Fruits

“…Only a limited number of microbial or plant extract-based and mineral (i.e., S-based and Cu-based) plant protection products are available for organic farmers [13]. Moreover, organic and non-organic production differ in respect to fertilisation protocols (organic vs. mineral synthetic fertilizers) as well as crop rotation systems [15,16]. Such contrasting practices applied in organic and non-organic systems may have an impact on yield, but also on plants' metabolism, which leads to differences in the crops' composition.…”