Exploring biophysical potential and sustainability of wheat cultivation in Uruguay at the national level

Abstract

A methodology is presented that explores soil survey information at the national level (1:1 M), generating sustainability indicators for wheat cultivation in Uruguay. Potential yields were calculated for simplified crop production situations under several constraints, such as limitation of water availability calculated from soil physical properties and climatic conditions, and limitation of nutrient availability calculated from soil fertility and climatic conditions. Land quality sufficiency was examined by comparing these yields with the constraint-free yield conditioned only by solar radiation, temperature and the crop's photosynthetic properties. Crop growth was simulated only for areas suitable for the defined agricultural use. Model runs were repeated with inclusion of a topsoil loss scenario over 20 years as defined from an erosion risk analysis. Comparison between crop growth simulations for the two situations, gives an indication of the changes in land quality status, which supplies an indicator for agroecological sustainability.On the basis of crop growth simulation it is concluded that wheat production constraints in Uruguay appear to be mainly related to water availability limitations, while nutrient availability is near optimal for the suitable soils. The simulated loss of topsoil impacts most on soil physical properties, expressed in reduced water-limited yields. Soil fertility status, evaluated by change in nutrient-limited yields, was little affected by the scenario.

Infrared Warming Reduced Winter Wheat Yields and Some Physiological Parameters, Which Were Mitigated by Irrigation and Worsened by Delayed Sowing

“…Higher temperature cause a faster plant development (shorter growing season), which decreased the photosynthesis period and hampered full grain filling [49]. In this study, DS and CK entered booting stage at the same time in this study although DS sowing seed later 15 days than CK (Fig.…”

CLUES: A web-based land use expert system for the Western Cape

“…The land evaluation approach is versatile as it can be applied in rural or urban land use planning (Bosshard 2000;Dai, Lee & Zhang 2001;Fourie 2006;Lütz & Bastian 2002) and it can be done on national (Mantel et al 2000), Land evaluation is part of a larger land use planning process and the results should be used to support decisions about land use change. While land evaluation focuses on the suitability of land units for different uses, land use planning examines the relationships between uses.…”

“…ALES has been applied in thirteen cases of which the most recent examples include applications for land use planning in the Philippines (Lantican et al 1998), the potential of sustainable wheat production in Uruguay (Mantel et al 2000), banana production potential on Hainan island, China (Mantel, Zhang & Zhang 2003) MapObjects was also applied in a SDSS called LEIGIS (Land Evaluation using an Intelligent Geographical Information System) to provide interactive mapping functionality. LEIGIS is similar to ISLE in most aspects, except that it was developed in MS Visual Basic and it uses the CLIPS expert system instead of FLEX (Kalogirou 2002).…”

Environmental Effects of Irrigation in Arid and Semi-Arid Regions

“…Mantel et al (2000) presented a methodology that explores soil survey information at the national level, thus generating sustainability indicators for wheat cultivation. The fertility capability soil classification system (FCC) was applied to analyze soil quality in the tropics.…”