How Soil Ecological Intensification by Means of Cover Crops Affects Nitrogen Use Efficiency in Pepper Cultivation

Roberto Mancinelli, Rosario Muleo, Sara Marinari and Emanuele Radicetti
Additional contact information
Roberto Mancinelli: Department of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences (DAFNE), University of Tuscia—Via S. Camillo De Lellissnc, 01100 Viterbo, Italy
Rosario Muleo: Department of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences (DAFNE), University of Tuscia—Via S. Camillo De Lellissnc, 01100 Viterbo, Italy
Sara Marinari: Department for Innovation in Biological, Agro-Food and Forest System (DIBAF), University of Tuscia, Via San Camillo de Lellissnc., 01100 Viterbo, Italy
Emanuele Radicetti: Department of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences (DAFNE), University of Tuscia—Via S. Camillo De Lellissnc, 01100 Viterbo, Italy

Agriculture, 2019, vol. 9, issue 7, 1-12

Abstract: Ecological intensification, based on agricultural practices that promote ecosystem services, has been recently proposed to match crop yield and environmental concerns. Two-year experiments were conducted in a Mediterranean environment. The treatments were: (i) four intensification levels (common vetch (CV), ryegrass (RG), bare soil without Nitrogen (N) fertilization (Control-N0) and with 100 kg ha −1 of N fertilization (Control-N100) applied during pepper cultivation), and(ii) two soil tillage [soil tillage at 15 cm and 30 cm of soil depth (ST-15 and ST-30, respectively)]. The field experiment was disposed in a randomized block design with three replications. Cover crop, soil samples, and pepper samples were collected for analysis. Soil available nitrogen increased after soil tillage, especially in CV, which showed the highest fruit yield. The reduced soil N availability in RG decreased fruit yield and N uptake. The agro-physiological efficiency of pepper was similar in common vetch and Control-N100, while it was low in ryegrass. However, the adoption of RG increased the soil organic matter more than both control treatments, which, in turn, caused a depletion of soil organic matter. Moreover, reduced tillage practices for green manuring that both cover crops arepreferable to reduce external inputs in terms of fuel saving and farming operations.

Keywords: green manure; soil nitrogen; soil organic matter; nitrogen use efficiency; sweet pepper; sustainable agriculture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/9/7/145/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/9/7/145/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:9:y:2019:i:7:p:145-:d:246326

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().