Opportunities and Challenges of Soil Carbon Sequestration by Conservation Agriculture in China

Management-Induced Changes to Soil Organic Carbon in China

“…The SOC pool is affected by a wide range of agricultural management practices including tillage (West and Post, 2002;Ussiri and Lal, 2009;Dalal et al, 2011;Zhang et al, 2014), residue management Ding et al, 2014;Liu et al, 2014b), fertilization Ding et al, 2014), manure application (MF) (Ding et al, 2014;Maillard and Angers, 2014), water management and soil drainage (Abid and Lal, 2008), etc. Thus, a wide range of C-smart practices have been adopted and popularized to replace traditional management practices.…”

“…In addition to enhancing the SOC pool, CA has numerous benefits of relevance to the environment and crop production (Delgado et al, 2013;Zhang et al, 2014). Thus, conversion of conventional tillage (e.g., plow tillage) to NT can result in redistribution of SOC within the soil profile (Powlson et al, 2014) and in soil-specific situations also enhance the SOC pool (West and Post, 2002;Zhang et al, 2014), particularly in surface soil (West and Post, 2002;Lu et al, 2009;Zhang et al, 2013b). Conversion to CA also enhances soil quality, increases aggregation, and improves aeration by enriching the surface SOC (Doran and Parkin, 1994;Franzluebbers et al, 2007).…”

The Effects of Tillage and Straw Incorporation on Soil Organic Carbon Status, Rice Crop Productivity, and Sustainability in the Rice-Wheat Cropping System of Eastern China

“…Moreover, studies have reported that an approximate 2% increase in yield was seen in rice and wheat crop from 1970 to 1990. Since then, yield has declined due to the deteriorating natural resource base; soil degradation; the rising cost of cultivation; soil erosion; reduced aggregation; environmental pollution [6]; increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) loss; pesticide management; and long-term conventional practices such as crop-intensive tillage, plowing, residue removal or burning, decreased profit, the prolonged time involved in seedbed preparation [7], and reduced support for public agricultural research [8]. Additionally, this system requires the high use of agricultural machinery, such as moldboard plow and rotary cultivators, and aggravates the degradation of existing SOC.…”

Weed Problems, Ecology, and Management Options in Conservation Agriculture: Issues and Perspectives

“…Region-wise CA prospects have been studied and reviewed by various authors viz., central Saskatchewan (Gray et al, 1996), Argentina (Dí az-Zorita et al, 2002), Brazil (Bolliger et al, 2006), Queensland (Thomas et al, 2007), Australia (D'Emden et al, 2008;Llewellyn et al, 2012), Africa (Giller et al, 2009(Giller et al, , 2011, east and southern Africa (Rockstr€ om et al, 2009), central Mexico (Govaerts et al, 2009a), United Kingdom (Morris et al, 2010), Zimbabwe (Thierfelder and Wall, 2010;Baudron et al, 2012), Mozambique (Nkala et al, 2011), Uzbekistan (Nurbekov et al, 2011), Turkey (Avci, 2011), US Great Plains (Hansen et al, 2012), central Asia (Kienzler et al, 2012), Morocco , Mediterranean climate (Flower et al, 2012;Kassam et al, 2012), Malawia (Ngwira et al, 2012), South Africa , and China (Zhang et al, 2014) etc. Although, there are reports of production disadvantages and lower yields in conservation tillage (CT) over conventional tillage (CoT), CT is attractive to farmers primarily because of the potential for reduced production costs; conservation benefits are only secondary (Allmaras and Dowdy, 1985).…”