The role of clay, organic carbon and long-term management on mouldboard plough draught measured on the Broadbalk wheat experiment at Rothamsted

Despite a high energy requirement, the mouldboard plough remains the dominant tillage tool in northwest Europe. The aim of this work was to evaluate the relative influences of soil texture (clay content), soil organic carbon (SOC) and long‐term management on soil‐specific draught (S), where S is the force per cross‐sectional area of worked soil. Measurements were made during autumn 2000 on the then 157‐year‐old Broadbalk wheat experiment at Rothamsted, UK, where clay contents vary from 19 to 39% and the different cropping history, mineral and organic fertilizer treatments lead to SOC values of 0.7–3.2%. Minimum SOC values increased with increasing clay and were associated with zero or low mineral N inputs, while higher SOC values (>2%) were associated with long‐term applications of farmyard manure (FYM), despite these being on the lighter (<24% clay) soils. S values ranged between 52 and 142 kPa, with higher values co‐located in areas with high clay contents. Contour maps were generated to illustrate the spatial variability of S and show similarity to those for clay. Where FYM had been added, S was 66 kPa compared with 74 kPa where only mineral or no fertilizer was applied on soils of the same texture. Increasing applications of mineral N resulted in relatively small increases in SOC but up to 12% reduction in S.     

洛桑试验站Broadbalk长期小麦试验地排水中磷组分研究

Total P (TP), total participate P (PP), total dissolved P (TDP), molybdate reactive P (MRP) and dissolved organic P (DOP) were determined in waters from pipe-drains (at 65-cm depth) from the Broadbalk Experiment at Rothamsted Research, UK. Average TP and PP exceeded 1 mg L^-1 in about half of the 12 plots receiving superphosphate for the 5 measurements taken between December 2000 and April 2001. Ranging between 33.8% and 87.3% of TP, PP was the largest P fraction in drainage waters, with DOP, ranging from 0.5% to 26.2% of TP, being the smallest fraction. Mean proportions of PP, MRP and DOP in TP in drainage waters were 63.4%, 32.5% and 4.1%, respectively. These findings support previous findings that P losses from soil to drainage waters were much larger than previously thought, and could therefore make a significant contribution to eutrophication.     

What good is weed diversity?

Should the declining diversity of weed communities in conventionally managed arable fields be regarded as a problem? The answer to this question has tended to divide researchers into those whose primary focus is on conserving farmland biodiversity and those whose goals are dictated by weed control and maximising yield. Here, we argue that, regardless of how weeds are perceived, there are common ecological principles that should underpin any approach to managing weed communities, and, based on these principles, increasing in‐field weed diversity could be advantageous agronomically as well as environmentally. We hypothesise that a more diverse weed community will be less competitive, less prone to dominance by highly adapted, herbicide‐resistant species and that the diversity of the weed seedbank will be indicative of the overall sustainability of the cropping system. Common to these hypotheses is the idea that the intensification of agriculture has been accompanied by a homogenisation of cropping systems and landscapes, accounting for both declines in weed diversity and the reduced resilience of cropping systems (including the build‐up of herbicide resistance). As such, weed communities represent a useful indicator of the success of rediversifying systems at multiple scales, which will be a central component of making agriculture and weed control more sustainable.