Search results for "Arable land"
showing 7 items of 37 documents
Main intrinsic factors driving land grabbing in the African countries’ agro-food industry
2022
Land grabbing is a phenomenon that has spread widely over the last two decades and which involves rich and emerging countries and international companies as protagonists in the large-scale acquisition of land in developing countries. Through the development of an econometric model that takes into account the annual size of land grabbing in the African countries, the research aims to understand the main intrinsic factors, linked to the hosting countries, that guide the large-scale acquisition of land by foreign investors. Results show that the presence of a high debt towards foreign organisations, the high availability of virgin lands, the strong vocation of the hosting country for the culti…
The effect of Shallow Tillage on soil erosion in a semi-arid vineyard
2019
Soil erosion has been considered a threat for semi-arid lands due to the removal of solid materials by water and wind. Although water erosion is currently considered the most important process of soil degradation, a growing interest has been drawn to the impact of soil tillage. Although numerous studies on tillage erosion have been carried out on arable land using a moldboard plow, a chisel, and a tandem disc for different crops, there are no studies on the effect of shallow tillage on soil redistribution in vineyards. The aim of this work was to evaluate the soil tillage erosion rate in a vineyard using a 13C natural abundance tracer. A strip of soil (C3-C soil) was removed, mixed with C4-…
Crop type and altitude are the main drivers of species composition of arable weed vegetation in Tajikistan
2015
Summary The influence of broad-scale environmental factors on the species composition of segetal weed communities in Tajikistan was investigated. The research was conducted throughout the country, analysing plots of root crops as well as cereals from all phytogeographical regions of Tajikistan, with the exception of the eastern Pamir. The study was based on 440 phytosociological relevees sampled between 2009 and 2013 and analysed using direct and indirect ordinations. A set of environmental variables was obtained for each plot: altitude, mean annual precipitation, mean annual temperature, pH, crop type, longitude, latitude and date of sampling (seasonality). Crop type was the major factor d…
Microfungal community structure in anthropogenic birch stands in central Finland
2002
We describe the soil microfungal communities in 30-year-old birch (Betula pendula Roth) stands planted either on former spruce forest soil (BS) or on former arable soil (BF) and compare these with the soil microfungal communities in spruce forests (S), arable fields (F) and old deciduous forests (D). Fungi were isolated from 0- to 3-cm and 3- to 6-cm samples collected in September 1997 and May 1998. Principal components analysis differentiated fungal communities in the S and BS sites from those in the other site types. The Morisita-Horn index of similarity indicated that fungal communities in the F and BF sites were less similar to those in the other site types. Fungal communities of the BS…
The role of competition and rarity in the restoration of a dry grassland in Finland
2001
Semi-natural grasslands have become scarce throughout Europe. Preservation of their plant species requires either the maintenance of the existing grasslands or the creation of new ones. To study the establishment and regeneration ability of plant species typical of dry grasslands we laid out an experiment on a former arable field in central Finland. We compared the success of 13 grassland species both in a theoretical situation with minimal competition and in competition with weeds. More than half of the species used were regionally rare. As a group, grassland plants reached the highest cover in the experimental plots in which outside competition was minimised by weeding. However, the total…
No-Till Soil Organic Carbon Sequestration Patterns as Affected by Climate and Soil Erosion in the Arable Land of Mediterranean Europe
2022
No-tillage (NT) has been considered an agronomic tool to sequester soil organic carbon (SOC) and match the 4p1000 initiative requirements of conservative soil management. Recently, some doubts have emerged about the NT effect on SOC sequestration, often because observations and experimental data vary widely depending on climate and geographic characteristics. Therefore, a suitable SOC accounting method is needed that considers climate and morphology interactions. In this study, the yearly ratio between SOC in NT and conventional tillage (CT) (RRNT/CT) collected in a previous study for flat (96 samples) and sloping (44 samples) paired sites was used to map the overestimation of SOC sequestra…
Essential oil crops for sustainable agriculture - A review
2009
Multifunctionality and diversification of farming systems, integration of agricultural practices both inter se and with the non-agricultural productive systems operating on the territory, biodiversity safeguards, and reduction in off-farm inputs, are key factors for all modern development strategies in agricultural areas. Such issues are valid worldwide, but are especially true in areas in which the cultivation of the more widespread and “classical” crops is constrained by factors of varying degree and importance. In Mediterranean areas, where many environmental and economic factors often reduce rural areas to marginal conditions, the search for new crop opportunities has become one of the …