Plant diversity effects on forage quality, yield and revenues of semi-natural grasslands

Sergei Schaub (), Robert Finger, Florian Leiber, Stefan Probst, Michael Kreuzer, Alexandra Weigelt, Nina Buchmann and Michael Scherer-Lorenzen
Additional contact information
Sergei Schaub: ETH Zürich, Agricultural Economics and Policy Group
Florian Leiber: Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL), Department of Livestock Sciences
Stefan Probst: ETH Zürich, Institute of Agricultural Sciences
Michael Kreuzer: ETH Zürich, Institute of Agricultural Sciences
Alexandra Weigelt: Leipzig University, Institute of Biology
Nina Buchmann: ETH Zürich, Institute of Agricultural Sciences
Michael Scherer-Lorenzen: ETH Zürich, Institute of Agricultural Sciences

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract In agricultural settings, plant diversity is often associated with low biomass yield and forage quality, while biodiversity experiments typically find the opposite. We address this controversy by assessing, over 1 year, plant diversity effects on biomass yield, forage quality (i.e. nutritive values), quality-adjusted yield (biomass yield × forage quality), and revenues across different management intensities (extensive to intensive) on subplots of a large-scale grassland biodiversity experiment. Plant diversity substantially increased quality-adjusted yield and revenues. These findings hold for a wide range of management intensities, i.e., fertilization levels and cutting frequencies, in semi-natural grasslands. Plant diversity was an important production factor independent of management intensity, as it enhanced quality-adjusted yield and revenues similarly to increasing fertilization and cutting frequency. Consequently, maintaining and reestablishing plant diversity could be a way to sustainably manage temperate grasslands.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-14541-4 Abstract (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:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-14541-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-14541-4

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().