The hidden land use cost of upscaling cover crops

Runck, Bryan C.; Khoury, Colin K.; Ewing, Patrick M.; Kantar, Michael B.

doi:10.1101/2020.02.13.947994

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Cover crops are an essential addition to the U.S. agriculture landscape to facilitate sustainable agricultural intensification on existing farmlands (Wittwer et al., 2017). They improve soil retention, weed control, water quality, and carbon sequestration while helping safeguard the agricultural land and its topsoil against soil erosion and nutrient loss by providing a continuous living cover during the off‐season months (Runck et al., 2020). Field pennycress ( Thlaspi arvense L.; pennycress) is a newly domesticated crop that can serve both as a cover crop as well as a viable oilseed for the U.S. Midwest (Johnson et al., 2015) and is currently being developed to fill this important role in U.S. agriculture.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic dissection of seed characteristics in field pennycress via genome‐wide association mapping studies

et al. 2022

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Field pennycress (Thlaspi arvense L.) is a new winter annual cash cover crop with high oil content and seed yield, excellent winter hardiness, early maturation, and resistance to most pests and diseases. It provides living cover on fallow croplands between summer seasons, and in doing so reduces nutrient leaching into water sources, mitigates soil erosion, and suppresses weed growth. The first ever genomewide association study (GWAS) was conducted on a pennycress diversity panel to identify marker trait associations with important seed size and composition related traits. The entire population was phenotyped in three total environments over 2 yr, and seed area, length, width, thousand grain weight, total oil, and total protein were measured post-harvest with specialized high-throughput imaging and near-infrared spectroscopy. Basic unbiased linear prediction values were calculated for each trait. Seed size traits tended to have higher entry mean reliabilities (0.76-0.79) compared with oil content (0.51) and protein content (0.37). Genotyping-by-sequencing identified 33,606 high quality genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) that were coupled with phenotypic data to perform GWAS for seed area, length, width, thousand grain weight, total oil, and total protein content. Fifty-nine total markertrait associations were identified revealing genomic regions controlling each trait.The significant SNPs explained 0.06-0.18% of the total variance for that trait in our population. A list of candidate genes was identified based on their functional annotations and characterization in other species. Our results confirm that GWAS is an efficient strategy to identify significant marker-trait associations that can be incorporated into marker-assisted selection pipelines to accelerate pennycress breeding progress.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic dissection of seed characteristics in field pennycress via genome‐wide association mapping studies

et al. 2022

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“…Multiple cropping, fertilizer application, and irrigation in China and India's agricultural lands had contributed to the greening Earth as a result of an observed increase in green leaf area 37 . Cover crops are commonly included in strategies aimed at increasing agricultural production 38 . Planting cover crops play an important role in improving the productivity of subsequent crops 39 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The global carbon sink potential of terrestrial vegetation can be increased substantially by optimal land management

Sha

Bai

et al. 2022

Commun Earth Environ

108

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Excessive emissions of greenhouse gases — of which carbon dioxide is the most significant component, are regarded as the primary reason for increased concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and global warming. Terrestrial vegetation sequesters 112–169 PgC (1PgC = 1015g carbon) each year, which plays a vital role in global carbon recycling. Vegetation carbon sequestration varies under different land management practices. Here we propose an integrated method to assess how much more carbon can be sequestered by vegetation if optimal land management practices get implemented. The proposed method combines remotely sensed time-series of net primary productivity datasets, segmented landscape-vegetation-soil zones, and distance-constrained zonal analysis. We find that the global land vegetation can sequester an extra of 13.74 PgC per year if location-specific optimal land management practices are taken and half of the extra clusters in ~15% of vegetated areas. The finding suggests optimizing land management is a promising way to mitigate climate changes.

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“…CLC's inclusion of a suite of strategies to achieve onfarm diversity, and particularly CLC's incorporation of marketable winter annual crops such as winter camelina (Camelina sativa) and pennycress (Thlaspi arvense), differentiates the approach from a singular focus on perennialization or cover cropping. CLC has been invoked as an example of multifunctional agriculture, or the simultaneous production of both ecosystem services and agricultural commodities (Jordan and Warner, 2010), and as a pathway to landscape level change toward more resilient agricultural systems (Runck et al, 2013). However, novel crops and cropping systems alone do not change food systems nor do they guarantee a more just and equitable system (Streit Krug and Tesdell, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An agroecological turn in intermediating sustainability transitions with continuous living cover

Conway

2023

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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Continuous living cover's (CLC) perennial and winter annual crop varieties present a novel opportunity to increase the diversity and resiliency of agroecological systems in the Mid-Continent of North America. However, transforming the predominant agri-food regime remains a complex and daunting undertaking. In the face of such complexity, a recent body of literature highlights the particular importance of intermediaries in facilitating sustainability transition processes, which CLC agriculture's proponents can draw upon. Intermediaries can be defined as actors or organizations that positively influence sustainability transition processes by linking diverse entities, networks, institutions, activities and their related skills, knowledges, and resources. Simultaneously, agroecology, in the more political understanding of the term, can serve as an evaluative framework for agri-food transition processes to augment our understanding of intermediaries in sustainability transitions. This mini-review presents an overview of the emerging sustainability transition intermediary literature, an introduction to CLC agriculture's transition intermediaries, and the research gaps highlighted from an agroecological perspective. Integrating an agroecological lens attentive to the science, practice, and politics of intermediating agricultural transitions, this review proposes an adapted framework to understand and assess CLC agriculture's intermediaries. Thus, CLC agriculture presents a unique opportunity to iteratively draw upon and advance the sustainability transition intermediary literature.

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The hidden land use cost of upscaling cover crops

Cited by 5 publications

References 22 publications

Genetic dissection of seed characteristics in field pennycress via genome‐wide association mapping studies

Genetic dissection of seed characteristics in field pennycress via genome‐wide association mapping studies

The global carbon sink potential of terrestrial vegetation can be increased substantially by optimal land management

An agroecological turn in intermediating sustainability transitions with continuous living cover

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