Examples of European research efforts to use agroecological principles in support of Integrated Weed Management (IWM) have been shared in a recent blog post on the Agricology website. Agricology is a community bringing farmers and researchers together to share knowledge in pursuit of “practical sustainable farming regardless of labels”.
The blog has been written by Anna-Camilla Moonen, from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy, who is well known in ENDURE circles, not least for her organisation of and participation in ENDURE’s summer schools.
In the article, she explains how agroecological crop protection requires the co-design of completely new and innovative cropping systems using local natural resources as far as possible. “The objective of these systems is to manage local agro-biodiversity that is able to produce healthy crops while supporting local soil fertility, conserving water resources, and protecting crops from pest attack,” she explains. “Besides focusing on soil fertility, attention is focused on robust cropping systems that prevent the development of huge outbreaks of pests, weeds and diseases.”
She reports on the work conducted in the H2020 Integrated Weed Management (IWM) project, IWMPRAISE, which has established that crop rotation and soil tillage are broadly recognised by experts and farmers as the most effective preventative tools in avoiding pests, weeds and diseases. Rotation is akin to diversification, she explains, which can be used over time and space: crop rotation being diversification over time and spatial diversification including row or strip intercropping and relay cropping, including agroforestry.
Anna-Camilla then provides examples of these approaches being tested and refined as part of the IWMPRAISE project at the University of Pisa’s Centre for Agro-Environmental Research (CIRAA) in San Piero a Grado. These all involve a significant redesign of the cropping system and the application of other IWM tools, such as specialised harrowing or hoeing equipment, during the crop growth cycle if necessary.
These approaches include an agroforestry system, combining rows of poplar and oak trees between 30m fields hosting a seven-year arable crop rotation with durum wheat, sorghum and faba bean, followed by a four-year meadow of Italian ryegrass, orchard grass, tall fescue, sulla and alfalfa.
A permaculture approach is also being trialled, involving beans and melons being transplanted into a permanent living mulch of a dwarf variety of white clover. This method is still under evaluation and researchers are investigating other species that could provide a living mulch in vegetable crops.
A third approach involves the relay cropping of perennial, annual and annual self-reseeding legumes in durum wheat to suppress weeds during the intercrop period after the wheat has been harvested and during the following summer crop. This trial is being run in parallel with an experiment in north-east Italy to compare the response of wheat and legumes in different agro-environmental regions.
“Results of the first year from the twin trials confirmed that wheat yield was the same in the control plots as in the wheat-legume plots,” reports Anna-Camilla. “The biomass production of perennial legumes in the following autumn and spring was good and this confirms their potential use for forage production or pasture.
“After wheat harvest, residuals of the annual legumes remained on the soil. However, their residual biomass was not sufficient to establish a suppressive dead mulch against weeds, making them less suitable for this system. Instead, annual-self reseeding legumes such as M. polymorpha and T. subterraneum cv Antas, were interesting because they managed to establish a dense cover from the shed seeds covering the soil until sowing of the following summer crop.”
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