Perspectives for Agronomy: Adopting Ecological Principles and Managing Resource UseM.K. van Ittersum, S.C. van de Geijn Elsevier, 1997 M12 11 - 363 pages During the 4th ESA-Congress, held in the Netherlands, 7-11 July 1996, a new perspective for agronomy emerged. Various contributions demonstrate the need for a new role of agronomy and its tools. In recent decades, agriculture has evolved from an activity with mainly productivity aims, into an issue conciliating environmental, agricultural, and economic and social objectives. Placing agriculture in such a broadened perspective requires a different agronomy, with new tools and approaches at a range of aggregration levels. It calls for detailed knowledge concerning the functioning, productivity and ecological relationships of agricultural plants and crops. In addition, it calls for a constant update and synthesis of existing and newly generated knowledge, the design of new ideotypes and genotypes, new production technologies, cropping systems, farming systems and agro-ecological land use systems. This proceedings book presents a set of case studies illustrating the various agronomic tools that can be used for specific agronomic questions. The case studies are grouped in sections illustrating relevant subquestions in developing an agriculture with broadened objectives. The book starts with an introductory paper on the role of agronomy in research and education in Europe. The second section deals with agricultural land use, food security and environment. This is followed by a set of papers describing experimental research and modeling approaches used to design new ideotypes of crops, including physiological properties in relation to growth factors such as radiation, CO2, temperature and water. Sustained soil fertility directly links to nutrient cycling and soil organic matter. A selected set of papers addresses the improvements in resource use efficiency and as such their contribution towards economic, environmental and agricultural objectives. The final section addresses the design of integrated and ecological arable farming systems. It highlights the role of prototyping interaction with leading-edge farmers, as promising tools to design, implement and test new farming systems. It is hoped that the activities of the European Society for Agronomy and the Proceedings of its 4th Congress will stimulate to serve the new perspectives of agronomy, i.e. to adopt ecological principles, to optimally manage the use of resources and to meet social and economic objectives. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 34
... interception by woody plants, and to quantify organic matter dynamics. Nitrogen (N) availability for woody plants and herbaceous plants in a mixed vegetation, was estimated in relation to variable woody plant canopy cover and the number ...
... interception by the crown was calculated as rainfall minus through fall and stem flow. Evaporation under the crown and beyond the crown area was measured by a microlysimeter, and the calculated water balance was verified by monitoring ...
... interception was measured with a photometer (trade-mark DECAGON), starting in April, when trees are without leaves, until maximum tree foliage biomass in August. Foliage biomass was estimated using the allometric relations established ...
... interception Isolated tree (%) Average 47 50, 65” Cereal yield increase Faidherbia x millet" Maximum Maximum 300 (kg/ha) 200–400 "In 20–30 cm topsoil under woody plant canopy in comparison to open field;"Acacia seyal and Sclerocarya ...
... interception (Table 3) support the conclusions from the synthesis study (Breman and Kessler, 1995). Based upon the enrichment factor, which expresses the importance of soil improvement by woody plants, soil improvement by woody plants ...
Contents
17 | |
65 | |
Section 4 MANAGING RESOURCE USE | 169 |
Section 5 DESIGNING FARMING SYSTEMS | 291 |
Author Index | 361 |
Subject index | 363 |