Management of chestnut plantations for a multifunctional land use under Mediterranean conditions: effects on productivity and sustainability

Abstract

Chestnut plantations for fruit production in Northern Portugal have been subjected to intensive management system, including soil tillage, mineral fertilization and pruning. Some of these practices have no positive effect on productivity and soilplant-water relations. Other systems (e.g., no tillage with maintenance of grass cover) have been adopted, aiming a multifunctional land use, exploiting nuts, pasture and edible mushrooms. Thus, an experimental trial was installed to assess the effects of such systems on productivity, sustainability and annual net income, as compared with the conventional system, over a six-year period. The treatments were: conventional soil tillage (CT); no tillage with permanent spontaneous herbaceous vegetation cover (NV); no tillage with permanent rainfed seeded pasture cover (NP); and as NP but with irrigation (NIP). Production of nuts, forage and edible mushrooms were measured and sustainability was assessed by production and diversity of fungal sporocarps. Annual net income was estimated by the difference between the annual gross outputs (market values for nuts, forage and edible commercial mushrooms) and the annual input costs. The greatest nut and edible mushroom production and sporocarp biodiversity were achieved in the NIP and NV and the smallest in the CT treatment. The highest annual gross output was estimated for the NV and NIP treatments, whereas the highest annual net income was obtained for the NV. No tillage with maintenance of spontaneous grass cover showed to be the most favourable management system, as it has increased productivity and biodiversity.

Chestnut Response to Organo-mineral and Controlled-Release Fertilizers in Rainfed Growing Conditions

“…Chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) has gained remarkable importance in recent years for fruit production in some countries of the Mediterranean basin (Martins et al 2011;Álvarez-Álvarez et al 2010). The species has several phytosanitary problems, which can severely reduce crop productivity.…”

“…In the past, chestnut was grown as isolated trees, small orchards, or mixed stands in agro-forestry systems, receiving reduced attention. Nowadays, chestnut trees are being planted just like other fruit tree species in true orchards and denser plantations (Martins et al 2011). The application of fertilizer is also widespread among farmers (Arrobas et al 2018).…”

Sweet chestnut agroforestry systems in North-western Spain: Classification, spatial distribution and an ecosystem services assessment

“…However, because of the wide range of ES supplied by these systems, they are considered as multifunctional landscape elements. Indeed, the possible role of chestnut plantations as multifunctional ecosystems has been highlighted (Martins et al, 2010). Social and demographic changes in the last century are associated with the loss of traditional cultural ecosystems (Morán-Ordóñez et al, 2011), landscapes (Martínez et al, 2010) and services (EME, 2011) in this geographical area.…”

Development of a Plant Geospatial Model for Identifying Chestnut Yield‐Limiting Factors

“…On the basis of a literature review and available data, 10 potential environmental and socioeconomic factors were selected as proxy variables to run in the geographical detector. One of the most important factors affecting chestnut yield is the local geography (Martins et al, 2011). We chose elevation, slope, and aspect as proxies of the geography.…”

“…After a literature review, we found that solar radiation was an important factor affecting chestnut yield; thus solar radiation was selected as a proxy variable for climatic conditions. The last factor we considered was the productivity condition (Martins et al, 2011), which also has a significant influence on chestnut yield. To express productivity quantitatively and spatially, the labor force and total power of agricultural machinery were selected as proxies.…”