Organic farming and resource efficiency

The Chapter discusses the efficiency of nutrient and energy use in organic farming, regarding the pressing need to make efficient use of natural resources. Nutrient recycling, the use of adapted plant varieties and energy-saving through the ban of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer are organic farming practices that enhance resource efficiency

Combining agronomic and breeding approaches for improved nutrient use efficiency

There is a strong need to improve agricultural nutrient use efficiency (NUE), but NUE is complex, and not even well defined. The abstract and presentation deal with how NUE is determined by the combination of Genetic, Environmental and Management factors (GxExM), and how genetics as well as crop management must be combined in order to achieve improved overall NUE

Nutrient budgets on organic farms: a review of published

This report was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference. On organic farms it is important that a balance between inputs and outputs of nutrients is achieved. This paper collates nutrient budgets collated at the farm scale for 88 farms in 9 temperate countries. The majority of budgets were compiled for dairy farms (56). All the nitrogen budgets showed an N surplus (average 83 kg N ha-1 year-1). The phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) budgets showed both surpluses and deficits (average 3.4 kg P ha-1 year-1; 13.7 kg K ha-1 year-1). For all nutrients as nutrient inputs increased the surplus increased more significantly than the nutrient outputs. Overall, the data illustrate the diversity of management systems in place on organic farms, which consequently lead to significant variability in nutrient use efficiency and potential nutrient sustainability between farms. There are opportunities for almost all organic farmers to improve the efficiency of nutrient cycling on the farm and increase short-term productivity and long-term sustainability

Genetic variation in nutrient uptake and nutrient use efficiency of oil palm

Observations of the vegetative and reproductive biomass produced annually and the mineral element contents have been conducted on diverse oil palm plant materials tested in a genetic test in Indonesia. The results show that the nutrient uptake (for trunk growth, leaf renewal and bunch export) greatly varies (CV = 10% for N uptake and 17% for K uptake) with the origins of the planting materials considered. For equivalent production, the uptake in nutrients of certain plant material may differ very significantly; for the same level of uptake in nutrients, production can vary significantly. This study supports the hypothesis that the optimal nutrient thresholds are intrinsically linked to the plant material. It assumes that some planting materials have different needs and that a fertilizer regime could be adapted to their specific needs without losses in performance. To confirm these assumptions, the need of implementing specific experimental devices with differentiated fertilization regimes is discussed. (Résumé d'auteur

Improved efficiency of nutrient and water use for high quality field vegetable production using fertigation

Drip-based fertigation may improve the application efficiency of water and nutrients while maintaining or improving marketable yield and quality at harvest and post-harvest. Two plantings of lettuce (Lactuca sativa) were grown in the UK, with six N treatments and two methods of irrigation and N application. The conventional overhead irrigated treatments had all N applied in the base dressing with irrigation scheduled from SMD calculations. The closed loop treatments had nitrogen and irrigation delivered via drip automatically controlled by a sensor and logger system. The work established that water content in the root zone can be monitored in real time using horizontally oriented soil moisture sensors linked to data logging and telemetry, and that these data can be used to automatically trigger drip irrigation for commercially grown field vegetables. When the closed loop irrigation control was combined with fertigation treatments, lettuce crops were grown with savings of up to 60% and 75% of water and nitrogen respectively, compared to standard UK production systems. However, excess supply of N through fertigation rather than solid fertiliser was more detrimental to marketable yield and post harvest quality highlighting that care is needed when selecting N rates for fertigation

Reduced tillage and green manures for sustainable organic cropping systems

The overall aim of the project Reduced tillage and green manures for sustainable organic cropping systems (TILMAN-)ORG are to design improved organic cropping systems with enhanced productivity and nutrient use efficiency, more efficient weed management and increased biodiversity, but lower carbon footprints. The TILMAN-ORG project is funded by the CORE Organic II Funding Bodies being partners of the FP7 ERA-Net project, CORE Organic II. The TILMAN-ORG project’s overall goals are to design improved organic cropping systems with: - enhanced productivity and nutrient use efficiency, - more efficient weed management and increased biodiversity, but - lower carbon footprints (in particular increased carbon sequestration and lower GHG emissions from soils). These goals will be achieved by adapting and integrating conservation agriculture techniques (in particular reduced tillage and improved use of green manures) into organic farming systems to intensify biological soil functions like nutrient cycling, soil carbon build-up, and biological nitrogen fixation, while at the same time optimising management protocols for weeds (which are the main challenge when introducing minimum tillage systems). Project partners - Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) - ISARA Lyon - Helmholtz Zentrum München (HMGU) - University of Kassel - Louis Bolk Institute (LBI) - Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR) - ILVO - Public Research Center-Gabriel Lippmann (CRP-GL) - Newcastle University (UNEW) - The Organic Research Centre - Elm Farm (ORC) - Estonian University of Life Sciences (EULS) - Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerche Agro-Ambientali (CIRAA) - Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (SSSA) - Universitat de Barcelona (UB) - Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL Austria

A comparison of foliar and soil uptake of nutrients in French bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.): a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Horticultural Science in Soil Science, Massey University

An aspect of each of three factors relating to efficiency of fertilizer use were studied in glasshouse experiments using beans Phaseolus vulgaris var. Gallatin 50. These three factors were: the quantities that can be applied; physiological aspects of nutrient utilization following foliar uptake; and interactions with other sources of nutrient supply. Distribution patterns of S35, P32 and Zn65 were examined following application to soil and foliage of beans. It was found that a greater proportion of P32 and Zn 65 was present in the fruit following foliar uptake than was the case following root uptake. This difference was not evident for S35. Retention of a commercial nutrient spray on the foliage of bean plants was measured and found to correlate well with both leaf area and leaf fresh weight. The effect of sprays on leaf chlorophyll was also examined. Environmental effects were found to have more influence on leaf chlorophyll than nutrient sprays. Root uptake of 32 was increased by spraying the foliage with either nutrient solution or water. It was concluded that the effect was water related and not connected with nutrient application. The implications of the above findings were discussed in the context of efficiency of fertilizer use

Optimizing nitrogen utilization by ecological recycling agriculture (ERA)

The main purpose of agriculture is food production. There are always limited resources available for food production, thus the resource efficiency is always the key issue. The modern agriculture is using resources like external nutrients (fertilizers) and non renewable energy in large scale. The high production intensity results in high production per hectare, on the other hand it results also in serious environmental harms.Organic farming is based on more internal and renewable resources than conventional farming.Very often it results also in lower production intensity and lower production per hectare. There is a common criticism against organic agriculture as inefficient use of land and also inefficient use of nutrients and energy per output unit. Closer scrutiny indicates far too often, that the system boundaries and definition of production system explain the results rather than the fundamentals of different production systems. Someexamples of these types of misleading factors are purchased fodder (e.g. production area and input resources for that are partly or fully ignored) and partial nutrient system, e.g. comparison between artificial nitrogen fertilizers and farm yard manure (FYM), i.e. primary nutrients and secondary nutrients (=FYM) are compared, despite of fact that no secondary nutrients exist without primary nutrients.In this survey the whole production system is introduced and all the main nutrient flows are presented. Integration between the animal husbandry and crop production is supported by diverse crop rotation and nutrient recycling in form of FYM. High recourse efficiency is reached and environmental harms can be highly reduced by ERA-farmin

Enhancing GHG balances in organic farms by integration of new bio-energy crop concepts

Chances to increase the efficiency of the plant production of organic farms by increasing of land equivalent ratios (LER), yield advances by nutrient recycling and the use of typical by-products of organic production in bio-energy cropping concepts are described. Mixed cropping with oil crops and the integration of hedges offer chances to increase land use efficiency, decrease GHG emissions and to simultaneously uphold food production