Abstract
Miscanthus is one of the most promising perennial herbaceous industrial crops worldwide mainly due to its high resource-use efficiency and biomass yield. However, the extent of miscanthus cultivation across Europe is still lagging far behind its real potential. Major limiting factors are high initial costs and low biomass yields in the crop establishment period, especially the first year. This study explores the possibility of establishing miscanthus under maize to generate yields from the first year of cultivation onwards. A field trial with mono-cropped maize and two miscanthus establishment procedures, ‘under maize’ (MUM) and ‘standard’ (REF), was established in southwest Germany in 2016. Annual aboveground biomass was harvested in autumn (2016–2018). In 2016 and 2017, the miscanthus dry matter yield (DMY) was significantly lower in MUM than REF. However, the accumulated DMY of miscanthus and maize was as high in MUM as in maize cultivation alone. In 2018, there was no significant difference between the miscanthus DMY of REF (7.86 ± 0.77 Mg ha−1) and MUM (6.21 ± 0.77 Mg ha−1). The accumulated DMY over the three years was 31.7 Mg ha−1 for MUM, of which 10.1 Mg ha−1 were miscanthus-based, compared to 17.7 Mg ha−1 for REF. These results indicate that miscanthus establishment under maize could compensate for its lack of yield in the first year.
Highlights
Miscanthus × giganteus (Greef et Deuter) is a high-yielding perennial, rhizomatous C4 grass with a productive lifetime of more than 20 years, if harvested brown after winter [1,2,3,4,5]
In 2016, there was no significant difference of maize dry matter yield (DMY) between Miscanthus was either established under maize (MUM)
The estimated annual DMY of mono-maize over the three years of observation accounted for 22.4 ± 2.1 Mg ha−1 with average annual DMY of mono‐maize over the three years of observation accounted for 22.4 ± 2.1 Mg an estimated average DMC of 33.3 ± 2.2%
Summary
Miscanthus × giganteus (Greef et Deuter) is a high-yielding perennial, rhizomatous C4 grass with a productive lifetime of more than 20 years, if harvested brown after winter [1,2,3,4,5]. A study by McCalmont et al (2017) [9] showed that perennial crops such as miscanthus can sequester up to 2.2 Mg ha−1 y−1 carbon over a 20-years period. Miscanthus can be cultivated on marginal lands due to its high resource-use efficiency and tolerance of various abiotic stresses [10,11,12,13,14,15]. Galatsidas et al (2018) [11] estimated the total area of marginal land suitable for miscanthus cultivation. Miscanthus can be considered a promising industrial crop, both in terms of climate change adaptation and mitigation, and for the provision of a more environmentally benign biomass supply for a growing bioeconomy [6,15,16,17,18]
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