Increasing crop rotational diversity can enhance cereal yields

Smith, Monique E.; Vico, Giulia; Costa, Alessio; Bowles, Timothy M.; Gaudin, Amélie C. M.; Hallin, Sara; Watson, Christine; Alarcón, Rafael; Berti, Antonio; Blecharczyk, A.; Calderón, Francisco J.; Culman, Steve W.; Deen, William M.; Drury, C. F.; García, Axel García y; García‐Díaz, Andrés; Plaza, Eva Hernández; Jończyk, K.; Jäck, Ortrud; Lehman, R. Michael; Montemurro, Francesco; Morari, Francesco; Onofri, Andrea; Osborne, Shannon L.; Pasamón, José Luis Tenorio; Sandström, Boël; Santín-Montanyá, M. I.; Sawińska, Z.; Schmer, Marty R.; Stalenga, J.; Strock, Jeffrey S.; Tei, Francesco; Topp, Cairistiona F. E.; Ventrella, Domenico; Walker, Robin; Bommarco, Riccardo

doi:10.1038/s43247-023-00746-0

Cited by 42 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…Our findings differ notably from previous findings on the effect of rotational complexity on yields using field-scale experimental data from long term studies [16,33]. Why might our results differ so dramatically?…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

“…Diverse crop rotations contribute to weed suppression and can be as profitable as conventional herbicide-based weed management strategies [14,29,30] while reducing freshwater pollution from agricultural runoff [31]. Importantly, rotational complexity increases yields [16,32,33] and yield stability [34,35]. However, whether these fieldscale benefits are ultimately translating to observable increases in yields at a landscape scale is uncertain.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rotational complexity across US counties is currently insufficient to observe yield gains in major crops

Burchfield,

Crossley,

Nelson

2024

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Landscape complexity promotes ecosystem services and agricultural productivity, and often encompasses aspects of compositional or configurational land cover diversity across space. However, a key agricultural diversification practice, crop rotation, extends crop land cover complexity concurrently across space and time. Long-term experiments suggest that complex crop rotations can facilitate yield increases in major crops. Using a compiled county-annual panel dataset, we examined whether yield benefits of crop rotational complexity were apparent on a landscape scale in the conterminous US for four major crops between 2008-2020. We found that the benefit of rotational complexity was only apparent for cotton and winter wheat, and that the benefit for wheat was driven by one region. Corn exhibited the opposite pattern, wherein higher yields were consistently obtained with lower rotational complexity, while soybean yield appeared relatively insensitive to rotational complexity. Effects of rotational complexity were sometimes influenced by agrochemical usage. Positive effects of rotational complexity were only apparent with high fertilizer for soybean and wheat, and with low fertilizer for cotton. Corn yield in high-complexity, low-yielding counties appeared to improve with high fertilizer inputs. For the overwhelming majority of acres growing these major crops, crop rotation patterns were quite simple, which when combined with the short time span of available data, may explain the apparent discrepancy between long-term experiments and nationwide data. Current demand and incentives that promote highly intensified and specialized agriculture likely hinder realization of the benefits of rotational complexity for production of key crops in the US. Increasing rotational complexity where major crops are grown thus remains an underutilized approach to mitigate landscape simplification and to promote ecosystem services and crop yields.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rotational complexity across US counties is currently insufficient to observe yield gains in major crops

Burchfield,

Crossley,

Nelson

2024

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…Although farmland bird diversity and abundance of field and shrub breeders might benefit from larger fields in areas with high SWF amount, enlarging fields would be detrimental to a variety of other taxa and, as such, to farmland biodiversity overall (Martin, Cadotte, et al, 2019a;Sirami et al, 2019). In such landscapes, although the effects of functional crop diversity were weaker than the effects of mean field size, increasing functional crop diversity not only supports farmland bird diversity and non-field breeders, as we show here, but can also increase the resilience of agricultural landscapes to extreme weather events (Renard et al, 2023) and even lead to higher cereal yields (Smith et al, 2023).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 60%

Woody semi‐natural habitats modulate the effects of field size and functional crop diversity on farmland birds

Frank,

Hertzog,

Klimek

et al. 2024

Journal of Applied Ecology

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Agricultural intensification has simplified landscape composition and configuration, which has led to biodiversity declines. Increasing landscape‐wide crop heterogeneity can promote farmland biodiversity. However, knowledge is still lacking on how the effects of configurational and compositional crop heterogeneity (i.e. field size and crop diversity) are modulated by the amount of semi‐natural habitats in the landscape, especially across large scales. We tested how mean field size and functional crop diversity affect farmland bird diversity and abundance over three consecutive years, and how these effects are modulated by the amount of small woody features (SWF) in the landscape. We related data from a national bird monitoring scheme to field‐level information from a novel, high‐resolution remote sensing‐based crop type map. Smaller field sizes and higher functional crop diversity were not generally associated with a higher diversity or abundance of farmland birds. Associations varied with species' breeding habitat preferences and were modulated by the amount of SWF. In landscapes with a low SWF amount, species diversity and the abundance of species breeding in field edges or shrubs were negatively associated with increasing field size. However, where the amount of SWF was high, larger field size was associated with higher species diversity and abundance of field and shrub breeders. Diversity increased with higher functional crop diversity, as did the abundance of non‐field breeders in landscapes with a medium to high SWF amount. Field size tended to have a stronger effect on bird diversity and abundance than functional crop diversity. Policy implications: National and EU agricultural policies should adopt a landscape perspective by considering the amount of semi‐natural habitats when designing biodiversity‐enhancing measures that target field size and functional crop diversity. In landscapes with low SWF amount, decreasing field sizes may be particularly effective to promote farmland bird diversity and the abundance of non‐field breeders. In landscapes with a medium to high SWF amount, increasing functional crop diversity is likely more effective than reducing field sizes. Field and shrub breeders may be promoted by maintaining landscapes with large fields, only if these offer a high SWF amount, low agronomic yield potential and low productivity.

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“…Details on the LTE experimental design, climatic conditions and diversity levels are summarized in the Supplementary Information (Table S1). Additional information is reported in Smith et al (2023), which used the same yield dataset, but did not explore the role of climatic conditions.…”

Section: Crop Yield Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Crop rotational diversity can mitigate climate‐induced grain yield losses

Costa,

Bommarco,

Smith

et al. 2024

Global Change Biology

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Diversified crop rotations have been suggested to reduce grain yield losses from the adverse climatic conditions increasingly common under climate change. Nevertheless, the potential for climate change adaptation of different crop rotational diversity (CRD) remains undetermined. We quantified how climatic conditions affect small grain and maize yields under different CRDs in 32 long‐term (10–63 years) field experiments across Europe and North America. Species‐diverse and functionally rich rotations more than compensated yield losses from anomalous warm conditions, long and warm dry spells, as well as from anomalous wet (for small grains) or dry (for maize) conditions. Adding a single functional group or crop species to monocultures counteracted yield losses from substantial changes in climatic conditions. The benefits of a further increase in CRD are comparable with those of improved climatic conditions. For instance, the maize yield benefits of adding three crop species to monocultures under detrimental climatic conditions exceeded the average yield of monocultures by up to 553 kg/ha under non‐detrimental climatic conditions. Increased crop functional richness improved yields under high temperature, irrespective of precipitation. Conversely, yield benefits peaked at between two and four crop species in the rotation, depending on climatic conditions and crop, and declined at higher species diversity. Thus, crop species diversity could be adjusted to maximize yield benefits. Diversifying rotations with functionally distinct crops is an adaptation of cropping systems to global warming and changes in precipitation.

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Increasing crop rotational diversity can enhance cereal yields

Cited by 42 publications

References 77 publications

Rotational complexity across US counties is currently insufficient to observe yield gains in major crops

Rotational complexity across US counties is currently insufficient to observe yield gains in major crops

Woody semi‐natural habitats modulate the effects of field size and functional crop diversity on farmland birds

Crop rotational diversity can mitigate climate‐induced grain yield losses

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