Benefits of mixing grasses and legumes for herbage yield and nutritive value in Northern Europe and Canada
Increased biodiversity may improve ecosystem services, including herbage yield. A mixture experiment was carried out at five sites in Northern Europe and one in Canada to investigate whether mixtures of grasses and legumes would give higher herbage yield than monocultures. Resistance of the mixtures...
Saved in:
Published in | Grass and forage science Vol. 69; no. 2; pp. 229 - 240 |
---|---|
Main Authors | , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Oxford
Blackwell Science
01.06.2014
Blackwell Publishing Ltd Wiley Subscription Services, Inc |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
Cover
Loading…
Summary: | Increased biodiversity may improve ecosystem services, including herbage yield. A mixture experiment was carried out at five sites in Northern Europe and one in Canada to investigate whether mixtures of grasses and legumes would give higher herbage yield than monocultures. Resistance of the mixtures to weed invasion and nutritive value of the herbage were also investigated. The experimental layout followed a simplex design, where four species differing in specific functional traits, timothy (Phleum pratense L.), smooth meadow grass (Poa pratensis L.), red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) and white clover (Trifolium repens L.), were grown in monocultures and eleven different mixtures with systematically varying proportions of the four species. Positive diversity effects (DE) were observed, leading to greater herbage dry‐matter (DM) yield in mixtures than expected from species sown in monocultures. For centroid mixtures, the DE generated on average an additional 32, 25 and 21% of the DM yield than would be expected from the monocultures in the first, second and third year respectively. On average, the mixtures were 9, 15 and 7% more productive than the most productive monoculture (transgressive overyielding) in the first, second and third year respectively. These benefits persisted over the three harvest years of the experiment and were consistent among most sites. This positive effect was not accompanied by a reduction in herbage digestibility and crude protein concentration that is usually observed with increased DM yield. Mixtures also reduced the invasion of weeds to <5% of herbage yield compared to monocultures (10–60% of herbage yield). |
---|---|
Bibliography: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gfs.12037 Agricultural Productivity Fund in Iceland 09/RFP/EOB2546 ark:/67375/WNG-LV6D5GPR-2 Science Foundation Ireland Icelandic Research Fund in Iceland INTERREG KolArctic The Norwegian Barents Secretariat County governors and Agriculture of Nordland, Troms and Finnmark in Norway istex:9B1FDF5FDC6FEE5E8769DC5D354372A09197E608 EU Commission CL Behms Foundation in Sweden ArticleID:GFS12037 ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 0142-5242 1365-2494 1365-2494 |
DOI: | 10.1111/gfs.12037 |