Biodiversity management practices and benefits in Conservation Agriculture systems

Initiating conservation agriculture shows reduced soil CO2emissions and improved soil aggregate stability in the first season in rainfed cropping in India

“…Soil microbial activities increase because of organic materials such as mulch and root biomass. A higher presence of fungal hyphae, bacterial waste products, organic gels, worm secretions and casts in CA soils can improve aggregate formation [14,15,19]. Microbial-derived carbohydrates in silts and clay fractions in no-tilled soils were higher than in conventionally tilled soils [40].…”

“…This leads to improved soil resilience and protection, which is particularly important during dry seasons in semi-arid regions to minimise soil erosion, water evaporation, surface crusting and temperature fluctuations [11][12][13]. Soil aggregate stability is improved by increasing organic materials such as humified organic matter from crop biomass being returned including roots, bacterial biomass and waste products, organic gels, fungal hyphae that produce a cementing compound, worm secretions and casts and mesofauna biomass [14,15]. When the soil is mechanically disturbed repeatedly, microbiota consume the young carbon pool through decomposition and mineralisation, depleting the major binding agents in macro and microsoil aggregates and reducing their stability and bearing capacity.…”

Conservation Agriculture: Climate Proof and Nature Positive Approach

“…The push to the CA-based system is due to its environmental and productivity sustainability and especially its ability to (i) reduce soil degradation, erosion and runoff, (ii) mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and (iii) sequester atmospheric CO 2 in the form of soil organic carbon, tackle climate change, (iv) improve biodiversity below and above the soil surface, and (v) enhance production system resilience to abiotic and biotic stresses [52][53][54][55][56][57]. In fact, CA systems were initially adopted for soil conservation and erosion control benefits, but they are gaining more and more attention as a practice to maintain and/or increase SOC and harness ecosystem services in agroecosystems [58].…”

Residual Herbicides and Cover Crops Interactions for Soybean Weed Control

“…Is currently cultivated in the no-tillage system (NTS) which has as fundamental precepts the permanent vegetation cover and the seeding on the plant biomass of the predecessor crop. The success of the no-tillage system in tropical and subtropical environments is due to the cultivation of cover species combined with the use of the herbicide glyphosate for its desiccation (Day et al, 2020;Kan et al, 2020) The advent of transgenic RR (RoundUp Ready) soybean made it possible to control weeds also in crop post-emergence. However, the repeated use of the herbicide ended up selecting resistant weeds, which led to an increase of 149.14% in the use of herbicides between 2007 and 2014 in Brazil (Agrofit, 2020), in addition to the increase in environmental problems such as the drift of herbicides to non-target areas (Vieira et al, 2020).…”