TY - JOUR

T1 - Legume intercropping with the bioenergy crop sida hermaphrodita on marginal soil

AU - Nabel, Moritz

AU - Schrey, Silvia D.

AU - Temperton, Victoria Martine

AU - Harrison, Lucy

AU - Jablonowski, Nicolai D.

N1 - Funding Information: This study conducted at Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, IBG 2: Plant Sciences was funded by the Helmholtz Association (POFIII, Key Technologies for the Bioeconomy). Funding Information: The digestate and the sand was provided by ADRW Naturpower GmbH & Co. KG, Ameln, and Rheinische Baustoffwerke, Inden, respectively. Many thanks to Sabine Willbold and colleagues from ZEA-3 for the sampling and chemical analysis of the plant materials and soil samples. We thank Axel Knaps for the provision of climate data. We thank Hendrik Poorter for his support during the planning of the experiment. We highly acknowledge the financial support of students’ apprentices by the DAAD and IAESTE program, providing great support for this experiment. We also thank the reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve this manuscript. Publisher Copyright: © 2018 Nabel, Schrey, Temperton, Harrison and Jablonowski.

PY - 2018/7/2

Y1 - 2018/7/2

N2 - The cultivation of perennial biomass plants on marginal soils can serve as a sustainable alternative to conventional biomass production via annual cultures on fertile soils. Sida hermaphrodita is a promising species to be cultivated in an extensive cropping system on marginal soils in combination with organic fertilization using biogas digestates. In order to enrich this cropping system with nitrogen (N) and to increase overall soil fertility of the production system, we tested the potential of intercropping with leguminous species. In a 3-year outdoor mesocosm study, we intercropped established S. hermaphrodita plants with the perennial legume species Trifolium pratense, T. repens, Melilotus albus, and Medicago sativa individually to study their effects on plant biomass yields, soil N, and above ground biomass N. As a control for intercropping, we used a commercial grass mixture without N2-fixing species as well as a no-intercropping treatment. Results indicate that intercropping in all intercropping treatments increased the total biomass yield, however, grass species competed with S. hermaphrodita for N more strongly than legumes. Legumes enriched the cropping system with fixed atmospheric nitrogen (N2) and legume facilitation effects varied between the legume species. T. pratense increased the biomass yield of S. hermaphrodita and increased the total biomass yield per mesocosm by 300%. Further, the total above ground biomass of S. hermaphrodita and T. pratense contained seven times more N compared to the mono-cropped S. hermaphrodita. T. repens also contributed highly to N facilitation. We conclude that intercropping of legumes, especially T. pratense and T. repens can stimulate the yield of S. hermaphrodita on marginal soils for sustainable plant biomass production.

AB - The cultivation of perennial biomass plants on marginal soils can serve as a sustainable alternative to conventional biomass production via annual cultures on fertile soils. Sida hermaphrodita is a promising species to be cultivated in an extensive cropping system on marginal soils in combination with organic fertilization using biogas digestates. In order to enrich this cropping system with nitrogen (N) and to increase overall soil fertility of the production system, we tested the potential of intercropping with leguminous species. In a 3-year outdoor mesocosm study, we intercropped established S. hermaphrodita plants with the perennial legume species Trifolium pratense, T. repens, Melilotus albus, and Medicago sativa individually to study their effects on plant biomass yields, soil N, and above ground biomass N. As a control for intercropping, we used a commercial grass mixture without N2-fixing species as well as a no-intercropping treatment. Results indicate that intercropping in all intercropping treatments increased the total biomass yield, however, grass species competed with S. hermaphrodita for N more strongly than legumes. Legumes enriched the cropping system with fixed atmospheric nitrogen (N2) and legume facilitation effects varied between the legume species. T. pratense increased the biomass yield of S. hermaphrodita and increased the total biomass yield per mesocosm by 300%. Further, the total above ground biomass of S. hermaphrodita and T. pratense contained seven times more N compared to the mono-cropped S. hermaphrodita. T. repens also contributed highly to N facilitation. We conclude that intercropping of legumes, especially T. pratense and T. repens can stimulate the yield of S. hermaphrodita on marginal soils for sustainable plant biomass production.

KW - Bioenergy

KW - Biomass production

KW - Facilitation

KW - Legume intercropping

KW - Marginal soil

KW - Perennial energy crop

KW - Sida hermaphrodita

KW - Ecosystems Research

KW - Sustainability Science

KW - Biology

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85049651961&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3389/fpls.2018.00905

DO - 10.3389/fpls.2018.00905

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 30013587

AN - SCOPUS:85049651961

VL - 9

JO - Frontiers in Plant Science

JF - Frontiers in Plant Science

SN - 1664-462X

M1 - 905

ER -