Abstract
Effective and sustainable weed management in agricultural fields is a prerequisite for increasing crop yield without negatively impacting the environment. The aim of this study was to explore how varying nitrogen (N) availability in cropping arrangements of pea (Pisum sativum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) grown as sole crops and intercrops at different fertilization levels and considering different N sources (soil mineralization, N fixation, N fertilizer) affects the response of weed species with differential N responsiveness. Crop and weed biomass were sampled at flowering and maturity. The total N content and 15N isotope signatures were analyzed to differentiate between N sources and to estimate the amount of N available to weeds. The highly N-responsive weed (Chenopodium album) accumulated more N and biomass than the weed with reduced N responsiveness (Galeopsis spp.). Fertilizer supply favored Chenopodium album, but not the crops. Altered soil N availability caused a shift in the dominance of the nitrophilic weed species towards the highly N-responsive species. This shift in dominance could affect the long-term weed community composition and thus have implications for sustainable weed management.
Highlights
Nicholas Korres and Rafael De PradoWeed management has always been an important part of agriculture and can be considered a specific case of vegetation management, in which various techniques are used to manage plant populations in a given area
The crop biomass in the micro-plots used for the 15 N analyses was significantly correlated with the biomasses of the larger plots used for the crop and weed biomass and
Responsiveness (HNR) and reduced N responsiveness (RNR), further research needs to verify to what extent those two species can be considered representative for the two groups of weed species addressed here
Summary
Nicholas Korres and Rafael De PradoWeed management has always been an important part of agriculture and can be considered a specific case of vegetation management, in which various techniques are used to manage plant populations in a given area. In light of a growing population, sustainable solutions are necessary to maintain or increase crop yields, and foster effective weed management options to provide nutrition without jeopardizing the environment [1,2]. As such, intercropping has been proposed as a system to simultaneously increase crop yields and benefit the environment, cereal–legume intercrops [2,3]. The combination of these two functionally different crops is especially beneficial due to their complementarity in nitrogen (N) acquisition, i.e., N-fixation by the legume component and strong N demand by the cereal component, and by increasing the competitiveness of the legume crop against weeds when intercropped with a competitive cereal partner. Besides altered N availability in intercrops, altered light interception through changes in canopy structure can affect weed competition [6]
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