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Tuesday, 22-May-2012 10:32:32 BST
Ecological Research Help Grassland Farmers Improve Their Yields
A hot topic in ecology in the last few years has been the extent to which plant biomass production in an ecosystem depends on species diversity. Most research on this topic has been carried out by ecologists in relatively species-rich environments and the general conclusion has been that ecosystem biomass production is less effective when species diversity declines. This observation has obvious implications for those fragile species-rich ecosystems under threat from human activity or climate change. But what about intensively managed grassland of the type that covers large areas of the temperate world?
These tend to be highly artificial plant communities, mostly monocultures, and are often managed using high inputs of fertilisers in order to obtain maximum production. Could the ecologists' findings be relevant to grassland farmers? A research project involving more than 20 European countries, carried out as a COST Action under the auspices of the European Science Foundation (ESF), has bridged the gap and demonstrated that the species diversity effect can work for grassland farmers too.
The COST 852 Agrodiversity project was carried out at 28 sites throughout Europe, as far apart as Iceland and Sardinia. Two sites in Wales also participated – a lowland site at Aberystwyth and an upland site at Bronydd Mawr (near Brecon). Both Welsh sites are part of IGER. At each site, experimental plots were planted with different combinations of four species that farmers of the region were familiar with. In central Europe they were red clover, white clover, perennial ryegrass and cocksfoot, another grass. Some plots had just one species, some had equal quantities of all four species, and some had a different balance, such as mostly one species and smaller amounts of the others. The big difference, compared to the ecological experiments, is that the plots were treated as they are on farms. They were moderately fertilised, they were harvested by machine and yields were calculated in tonnes per hectare instead of the normal grams per square metre.
The results from the first year showed that, on average, if four species were sown instead of one an additional 3.5 tonnes per hectare of herbage was produced. There were also significantly fewer weeds in the field. At most sites, the yield from a mix of species exceeded the yield from a monoculture of the most productive species, an effect known in ecology as 'overyielding'. And the best mix used equal quantities of each of the four species. Unpublished data from the next two years of the project show that these benefits persisted. In intensive agricultural grassland, maximising yield for forage production is the main priority. The COST 852 Agrodiversity project has shown that even modest increases in the plant diversity of sown pastures can contribute to this aim.
Results from the two sites in Wales were in general accordance with the trends observed in the rest of Europe. However, there were large site effects on the behaviour of individual species, and the same mixtures sown at the two sites ended up containing very different species proportions at the end of the three year experiment due to the different environmental conditions.
Optimisation of grass yields in upland and lowland farms may therefore require establishing species diversities tailored to the particular environment.
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