Crop performance, biological N fixation and pre-crop effect of pea ideotypes in an organic farming system

Pea ( Pisum sativum L.) is a valuable grain legume in organic crop rotations. Pea rotations provide nitrogen (N) to the system through N fixation and produce animal feed or human food. Because of the high susceptibility of pea to pests, diseases and weeds and due to low profitability, especially in...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nutrient cycling in agroecosystems 2019-12, Vol.115 (3), p.391-405
Main Authors: Gollner, Gabriele, Starz, Walter, Friedel, Jürgen K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural practices
Agricultural production
Agriculture
Animal feed
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Cereal crops
Crop rotation
Crop yield
Cropping systems
Crops
Cultivars
Economics
Farming systems
Feeds
Fixation
Fodder
Forage
Genotypes
Grain
Legumes
Life Sciences
Nitrates
Nitrogen
Organic farming
Original Article
Pests
Profitability
Wheat
Winter wheat
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Pea ( Pisum sativum L.) is a valuable grain legume in organic crop rotations. Pea rotations provide nitrogen (N) to the system through N fixation and produce animal feed or human food. Because of the high susceptibility of pea to pests, diseases and weeds and due to low profitability, especially in organic systems, pea cropping intensity decreased in the last 15 years in Austria. Therefore, it is important to find strategies for improving pea cropping systems in organic systems, by increasing yields and providing a positive N balance. The objective of this study was to compare pea genotypes of selected field and fodder pea in pure and mixed pea stands for biomass performance, biological N fixation and pre-crop effect under dry site conditions in a 2-year study in Eastern Austria. Pea N fixation was estimated using the extended N-difference method, with oat as the reference crop. The highest grain yield was found for the leafed field pea, with 2.5 Mg dry mass (DM) ha −1 , followed by the semi-leafless field pea with 2.1 Mg DM ha −1 and the pea-mixtures with 2.2 Mg DM ha −1 . The field pea cultivars yielded more than the fodder pea cultivars with 1.6 Mg DM ha −1 . The average N concentration in pea grains was 3.6 mg g −1 . The fodder pea type contained 3.8 mg g −1 , significantly more N ( p  
ISSN:1385-1314
1573-0867
DOI:10.1007/s10705-019-10021-4