Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Soil Moisture Conservation through Crop Diversification and Related Ecosystem Services in a Blown-Sand Area with High Drought Hazard

Dénes Lóczy
* ORCID logo ,
József Dezső
,
Tamás Weidinger
,
László Horváth
ORCID logo ,
Ervin Pirkhoffer
,
Szabolcs Czigány
ORCID logo
Version 1 : Received: 19 December 2023 / Approved: 19 December 2023 / Online: 20 December 2023 (06:30:02 CET)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Lóczy, D.; Dezső, J.; Weidinger, T.; Horváth, L.; Pirkhoffer, E.; Czigány, S. Soil Moisture Conservation through Crop Diversification and Related Ecosystem Services in a Blown-Sand Area with High Drought Hazard. Plants 2024, 13, 494. Lóczy, D.; Dezső, J.; Weidinger, T.; Horváth, L.; Pirkhoffer, E.; Czigány, S. Soil Moisture Conservation through Crop Diversification and Related Ecosystem Services in a Blown-Sand Area with High Drought Hazard. Plants 2024, 13, 494.

Abstract

Soil moisture reserve is a key factor in maintaining soil fertility and all other related ecosystem services (including carbon sequestration, soil biodiversity, soil erosion control). In semiarid blown-sand areas under aridification water preservation is a particularly crucial task for agriculture. The international Diverfarming project (2017–2022) within the EU Horizon 2020 Program focused on the impacts of crop diversification and low-input practices in all pedoclimatic regions of Europe. In the three-year experiment conducted in the Pannonian region the impacts of intercropping asparagus with different herbs on some provisioning and regulating ecosystem services were evaluated in the Kiskunság sand regions. Relying on the findings based on a range of measured physical and chemical soil parameters and on crop yields and qualitative properties, advice was formulated for farmers. The message drawn from the experiment is somewhat ambiguous. The local farmer agrees that crop diversification improves soil quality, but he denies that it would directly influence farm competitiveness, which primarily depends on cultivation costs (such as fertilization, plant protection and labour). Further analyses are needed to prove the long-term benefits of diversification through enriching soil microbial life and the possible reduction of fertilizer use while water demand is kept at a low level and the same crop quality is ensured.

Keywords

crop diversification; wind erosion; organic matter; water retention; carbon storage; greenhouse gas emissions; cover crops

Subject

Environmental and Earth Sciences, Environmental Science

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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