Microsegregation in Maize Cropping—a Chance to Improve Farmland Biodiversity

Microsegregation in Maize Cropping—a Chance to Improve Farmland Biodiversity

The need to preserve and enhance biodiversity in agricultural landscapes is widely accepted. In the case of maize, there is a chance to combine production and biodiversity in the same field by microsegregation: wildflowers are sown between the future maize rows after harvest of the last main crop. T...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Gesunde Pflanzen Vol. 71; no. 2; pp. 87 - 102
Main Authors: von Redwitz, Christoph, Glemnitz, Michael, Hoffmann, Jörg, Brose, Ruth, Verch, Gernot, Barkusky, Dietmar, Saure, Christoph, Berger, Gert, Bellingrath-Kimura, Sonoko
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01-06-2019
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:
Agricultural land
Agricultural management
Agricultural production
Agriculture
Beetles
Biodiversity
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Cereal crops
Corn
Ecological effects
Environmental quality
Fertilization
Flowering
Flowers
Life Sciences
Original Article
Plant Pathology
Pollinators
Spraying
Tillage
Vegetation
Ackervögel
Mischkulturen
Intercropping
Wildblumenmischung
Yield
Ertrag
Farmland bird
Wildflower mixture
Strip-till
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The need to preserve and enhance biodiversity in agricultural landscapes is widely accepted. In the case of maize, there is a chance to combine production and biodiversity in the same field by microsegregation: wildflowers are sown between the future maize rows after harvest of the last main crop. These wildflower strips provide flowers and vegetation structure within fields and favour biodiversity without losing production area. The system is based on reliable cropping techniques such as strip-till, underground fertilization and band spraying, allowing the poor habitat quality of conventional maize caused by late soil tillage and lack of vegetation structure to be overcome. Field trials at two sites in Germany were conducted, testing the agricultural feasibility, ecological efficiency and yield impacts. The results show the successful establishment of the wildflower strips between the maize rows. Flowering diversity was up to eight times higher than in conventional maize crop stands. Positive implications for pollinators and ground beetles could be proved. The habitat quality for the skylark could be improved by a factor of 2–3, to nearly normal reproduction of the population. A yield reduction of at least 30% was observed. Further investigations will address this yield gap. Furthermore, the management of spontaneous weeds needs further improvement.
ISSN:0367-4223
1439-0345
DOI:10.1007/s10343-019-00457-7