There is growing international interest in better managing soils to increase soil organic carbon (SOC) content to contribute to climate change mitigation, to enhance resilience to climate change and to underpin food security, through initiatives such as international ‘4p1000’ initiative and the FAO's Global assessment of SOC sequestration potential (GSOCseq) programme. Since SOC content of soils cannot be easily measured, a key barrier to implementing programmes to increase SOC at large scale, is the need for credible and reliable measurement/monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) platforms, both for national reporting and for emissions trading. Without such platforms, investments could be considered risky. In this paper, we review methods and challenges of measuring SOC change directly in soils, before examining some recent novel developments that show promise for quantifying SOC. We describe how repeat soil surveys are used to estimate changes in SOC over time, and how long‐term experiments and space‐for‐time substitution sites can serve as sources of knowledge and can be used to test models, and as potential benchmark sites in global frameworks to estimate SOC change. We briefly consider models that can be used to simulate and project change in SOC and examine the MRV platforms for SOC change already in use in various countries/regions. In the final section, we bring together the various components described in this review, to describe a new vision for a global framework for MRV of SOC change, to support national and international initiatives seeking to effect change in the way we manage our soils.

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As global demand for livestock products (such as meat, milk and eggs) is expected to double by 2050, necessary increases to future production must be reconciled with negative environmental impacts that livestock cause. This paper describes the LivestockPlus concept and demonstrates how the sowing of improved forages can lead to the sustainable intensification of mixed crop-forage-livestock-tree systems in the tropics by producing multiple social, economic and environmental benefits. Sustainable intensification not only improves the productivity of tropical forage-based systems but also reduces the ecological footprint of livestock production and generates a diversity of ecosystem services (ES) such as improved soil quality and reduced erosion, sedimentation and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Integrating improved grass and legume forages into mixed production systems (crop-livestock, tree-livestock, crop-tree-livestock) can restore degraded lands and enhance system resilience to drought and waterlogging associated with climate change. When properly managed tropical forages accumulate large amounts of carbon in soil, fix atmospheric nitrogen (legumes), inhibit nitrification in soil and reduce nitrous oxide emissions (grasses), and reduce GHG emissions per unit livestock product.The LivestockPlus concept is defined as the sustainable intensification of forage-based systems, which is based on 3 interrelated intensification processes: genetic intensification -the development and use of superior grass and legume www.tropicalgrasslands.info cultivars for increased livestock productivity; ecological intensification -the development and application of improved farm and natural resource management practices; and socio-economic intensification -the improvement of local and national institutions and policies, which enable refinements of technologies and support their enduring use. Increases in livestock productivity will require coordinated efforts to develop supportive government, non-government organization and private sector policies that foster investments and fair market compensation for both the products and ES provided. Effective research-for-development efforts that promote agricultural and environmental benefits of foragebased systems can contribute towards implemention of LivestockPlus across a variety of geographic, political and socio-economic contexts. ResumenDe la misma manera que la demanda global de productos pecuarios (carne, leche, huevos) se duplicará para 2050, se espera que las producciones futuras tengan en cuenta los efectos ambientales negativos ocasionados por este sector. En este documento se describe el concepto LivestockPlus y se demuestra cómo en el trópico los forrajes mejorados pueden llevar a la intensificación sostenible de sistemas de producción mixta que integran forrajes/ganadería y cultivos y/o árboles, produciendo múltiples beneficios sociales, económicos y ambientales. La intensificación sostenible no sólo incrementa la productividad de los sistemas tropicales basados en forra...

Biological nitrification inhibition activity in a soil-grown biparental population of the forage grass, Brachiaria humidicola The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) believes that open access contributes to its mission of reducing hunger and poverty, and improving human nutrition in the tropics through research aimed at increasing the eco-efficiency of agriculture. CIAT is committed to creating and sharing knowledge and information openly and globally. We do this through collaborative research as well as through the open sharing of our data, tools, and publications.

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Accelerated soil-nitrifier activity and rapid nitrification are the cause of declining nitrogen-use efficiency (NUE) and enhanced nitrous oxide (NO) emissions from farming. Biological nitrification inhibition (BNI) is the ability of certain plant roots to suppress soil-nitrifier activity, through production and release of nitrification inhibitors. The power of phytochemicals with BNI-function needs to be harnessed to control soil-nitrifier activity and improve nitrogen-cycling in agricultural systems. Transformative biological technologies designed for genetic mitigation are needed, so that BNI-enabled crop-livestock and cropping systems can rein in soil-nitrifier activity, to help reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and globally make farming nitrogen efficient and less harmful to environment. This will reinforce the adaptation or mitigation impact of other climate-smart agriculture technologies.