Effect of plant edges strips on the conservation soil properties in modern farming field

The European Green Deal encourages the use of non-productive activities in agriculture. One of the measures is the cultivation of melliferous floral plants at the field margins. Their influence on soil compaction and other deterioration is due to heavy machinery, its inappropriate use and frequent driving on field margins, is little studied. Plants of a high environmental value though rarely grown by farmers were selected for melliferous plant strips: perennial grass swards (PGS), perennial legume swards (PLS), annual floral plats mixture (AEP) and natural grassland swards (NGS). The experiment was installed on a clay loam and loam Cambisol with the aim to determine the effect of different plant composition strips grown at the field edges on the physical and chemical soils parameters of with different granulometric structure. It was found that the highest amounts of roots and plant residues in the soil were left after cultivating sward strips of PGS and NGS compared to the field where cereals had been intensively grown. The amounts of root and plant residues produced by plants, soil rest increase the amount of organic carbon in the soil. During the five-year period, the plants edges strips improved the properties of the field margin top and subsoil.

Cover Crop Yield, Nutrient Storage and Release under Different Cropping Technologies in the Sustainable Agrosystems

Due to short post-harvest seasons, it is not always possible to grow worthy cover crops (CCs). This research aims to clarify the impact of undersown red clover (Trifolium pratense L., RC) and post-sown white mustard (Sinapis alba L., WM) management on their biomass, accumulated nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) content and the nutrient release to subsequent main crops. During the study period, RC mass yields varied from 220 to 6590 kg ha-1 DM and those of WM from 210 to 5119 kg ha-1 DM. WM shoot biomass increased with the increase in rainfall in August and the average daily temperature of the post-harvest period. CC productivity and efficiency were higher when growing short-season spring barley than winter wheat. In the warm and rainy post-harvest period, undersown WM after winter wheat increased the biomass by 34.1% compared to post-harvest sowing. The application of straw (+N) increased the accumulation of nutrients in WM biomass. The intensive fertilization of the main crop had a negative effect on RC yield and NPK accumulation. RC shoot biomass was characterized by a higher N content and WM by a higher P concentration. Well-developed CCs could reduce soil mineral nitrogen content by 28.5-58.8% compared to a plot without CCs. Nutrient transfer to spring barley was dependent on the N content of CC biomass and the carbon and nitrogen ratio (C:N < 20). We conclude that CC growth and efficiency were enhanced by the investigated measures, and in interaction with meteorological conditions.

Effects of Pea (Pisum sativum L.) Cultivars for Mixed Cropping with Oats (Avena sativa L.) on Yield and Competition Indices in an Organic Production System

The benefits of cereal-legume mixed cropping is a sustainable agricultural practice. However, knowledge of the genotypic differences of semi-leafless pea varieties is not enough to help them compete with cereals. In this study, the effects of Lithuania's newest Pisum sativum cultivars ('Egle DS' and 'Lina DS') and, for comparison, a control cultivar ('Jūra DS') established with Avena sativa in mixed cropping system were investigated. Three years of field trials (2018, 2019 and 2020) with four experiments involved three different mixtures of each field pea cultivar with oat. The aboveground biomass of mixed cropped new field pea cultivars was found to be significantly higher: biomass of cultivars 'Egle DS' increased by 17.0% and 'Lina DS' by 7.2% on average compared with the control cultivar 'Jūra DS'. For the mixed cropping system, statistically greater total aboveground biomass was observed with plant ratios of 50% pea + 50% oat and 60% pea + 40% oat compared to peas monocultures. Mixed cropped oat was the dominant species in all tested mixture compositions; however, the highest total grain yield of mixed crops was obtained when new pea 'Lina DS' and 'Egle DS' cultivars were included in the mixtures compared with the control cultivar. The new pea cultivar 'Egle DS' had a greater effect on protein content compared to other tested pea cultivars. In the new pea cultivars 'Lina DS' and 'Egle DS', the higher photosynthetic capacity and aboveground biomass of mixed cropped pea with oat showed mixture effects in the mixed cropped system and could increase total yield compared with pea monoculture. Generally, the new pea cultivars displayed a greater Land Equivalent Ratio (LER) value, resulting in the greatest yield among the mixtures on average for all three years and all four experiments. Future research could optimize the effects of pea cultivar mixtures with cereals to further improve the yield of organic mixed cropping systems.