In response to evidence of insect pollinator declines, organisations in many sectors, including the food and farming industry, are investing in pollinator conservation. They are keen to ensure that their efforts use the best available science. We convened a group of 32 ‘conservation practitioners’ with an active interest in pollinators and 16 insect pollinator scientists. The conservation practitioners include representatives from UK industry (including retail), environmental non-government organisations and nature conservation agencies. We collaboratively developed a long list of 246 knowledge needs relating to conservation of wild insect pollinators in the UK. We refined and selected the most important knowledge needs, through a three-stage process of voting and scoring, including discussions of each need at a workshop. We present the top 35 knowledge needs as scored by conservation practitioners or scientists. We find general agreement in priorities identified by these two groups. The priority knowledge needs will structure ongoing work to make science accessible to practitioners, and help to guide future science policy and funding. Understanding the economic benefits of crop pollination, basic pollinator ecology and impacts of pesticides on wild pollinators emerge strongly as priorities, as well as a need to monitor floral resources in the landscape

Agriculture, and its impact on land, contributes almost a third of total human emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). At the same time, it is the only sector which has significant potential for negative emissions through offsetting via the supply of feedstock for energy and sequestration in biomass and soils. Perennial crops represent 30% of the global cropland area. However, the positive effect of biomass storage on net GHG emissions has largely been ignored. Reasons for this include the inconsistency in methods of accounting for biomass in perennials. In this study, we present a generic model to calculate the carbon balance and GHG emissions from perennial crops, covering both bioenergy and food crops. The model can be parametrized for any given crop if the necessary empirical data exists. We illustrate the model for four perennial cropsapple, coffee, sugarcane, and Miscanthus-to demonstrate the importance of biomass in overall farm GHG emissions.

On a site in the Sudan Savanna, chemical properties of soils (except for phosphate) and the composition of cotton leaves were determined after fifteen annual treatments including dung, ammonium sulphate, single superphosphate and potassium chloride, in all combinations of three levels. In the soils dung increased C, N, cation exchange capacity, exchangeable Ca and Mg and pH, and decreased soluble Al and Mn; ammonium sulphate decreased pH, increased soluble Al and Mn, and decreased exchangeable Ca and Mg; potassium chloride had no obvious effects. In the plants dung increased P and reduced Mn; ammonium sulphate reduced Ca and Mg, and increased Mn; superphosphate increased P, Ca and Mg, and reduced K; potassium chloride increased K slightly. The most important results were the ability of ammonium sulphate to acidify the soil, as shown by soil properties and reflected in tissue composition, and the ability of dung to ameliorate these effects. Reduction of crop yield in the presence of adequate nutrient supply seems to have been due to excessive soil acidity.In 1949-50 a number of manurial trials, designed to test the effects of four materials separately and in all combinations, were started in Northern Nigeria. The materials and their rates of application were: D-Dung (cattle pen manure) o, 1 and 2 tons/acre N-Ammonium sulphate (21 %N) o, 50 and 100 lb/acre P-Single superphosphate (8-7%P) o, 50 and 100 lb/acre K-Potassium chloride (42%K) 0, 25 and 50 lb/acre.A 3 4 factorial design was used and the total of 81 plots was arranged in 9 blocks. Plot size was 1/20 acre, with adequate discards, and each plot received the same manurial treatment each year. Many of these trials were stopped in 1957, and Obi (1959) summarized the effects on crop yields up to that time, but three of them were continued. The trial at Samaru has been mono-cropped with sprayed cotton since 1961, and this paper reports the effects of the fertilizer and manure treatments on some chemical properties of the soil and on the composition of leaf samples from the cotton crop with respect to certain chemical elements. MATERIALS AND METHODSThe site of the experiment is within the Sudan Savanna zone and has a light brown loamy fine sand topsoil, with a sharp boundary at about 8-9 in. to a loam/sandy clay loam subsoil. Acid metamorphic rocks are thought to underlie the site, but the soil also incorporates a considerable amount of drift material.

SUMMARYInitial results of long-term trials in northern Nigeria indicate that deficiencies of potassium and trace elements, and soil acidity, may become important under continuous cultivation on some soils, in addition to the more common deficiencies of nitrogen and phosphorus.

No abstract