Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Mitigating crop yield losses through weed diversity

Mitigating crop yield losses through weed diversity Reconciling crop productivity and biodiversity maintenance is one of the main challenges of agriculture worldwide. Moreover, the importance of weed diversity in mitigating yield losses has been identified as one of the top five research priorities in weed science. We tested the hypotheses that (1) not all weed communities generate yield losses and (2) that more diversified weed communities can mitigate yield losses. The study is based on three years of observations of weed densities, weed biomass and crop biomass at four critical growth stages of winter cereals across 54 zones (36 unweeded and 18 weeded). Out of the six communities identified, only four generated significant yield losses in unweeded zones, ranging from 19% to 56%. The number of ears per plant and the number of grains per ear were systematically affected. Only one weed community was capable of reducing 1,000-kernel weight. Weed biomass decreased by 83% over the gradient of weed community evenness, whereas crop productivity increased by 23%. Diversified weed communities limited the negative effect of competitive and dominant species on crop productivity while potentially promoting ecosystem services provided by subordinate species. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Nature Sustainability Springer Journals

Mitigating crop yield losses through weed diversity

Download PDF
9 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/mitigating-crop-yield-losses-through-weed-diversity-bT2W3cl7T0

References (53)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited
Subject
Environment; Sustainable Development
eISSN
2398-9629
DOI
10.1038/s41893-019-0415-y
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Reconciling crop productivity and biodiversity maintenance is one of the main challenges of agriculture worldwide. Moreover, the importance of weed diversity in mitigating yield losses has been identified as one of the top five research priorities in weed science. We tested the hypotheses that (1) not all weed communities generate yield losses and (2) that more diversified weed communities can mitigate yield losses. The study is based on three years of observations of weed densities, weed biomass and crop biomass at four critical growth stages of winter cereals across 54 zones (36 unweeded and 18 weeded). Out of the six communities identified, only four generated significant yield losses in unweeded zones, ranging from 19% to 56%. The number of ears per plant and the number of grains per ear were systematically affected. Only one weed community was capable of reducing 1,000-kernel weight. Weed biomass decreased by 83% over the gradient of weed community evenness, whereas crop productivity increased by 23%. Diversified weed communities limited the negative effect of competitive and dominant species on crop productivity while potentially promoting ecosystem services provided by subordinate species.

Journal

Nature Sustainability – Springer Journals

Published: Nov 11, 2019

There are no references for this article.