Tanveer Mohsin, Anjum Shakeel Ahmad, Hussain Saddam, Cerdà Artemi, Ashraf Umair
School of Land and Food, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia.
Department of Agronomy, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Faisalabad, Pakistan.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2017 Mar;24(8):6973-6988. doi: 10.1007/s11356-017-8371-4. Epub 2017 Jan 13.
Climate change, soil degradation, and depletion of natural resources are becoming the most prominent challenges for crop productivity and environmental sustainability in modern agriculture. In the scenario of conventional farming system, limited chances are available to cope with these issues. Relay cropping is a method of multiple cropping where one crop is seeded into standing second crop well before harvesting of second crop. Relay cropping may solve a number of conflicts such as inefficient use of available resources, controversies in sowing time, fertilizer application, and soil degradation. Relay cropping is a complex suite of different resource-efficient technologies, which possesses the capability to improve soil quality, to increase net return, to increase land equivalent ratio, and to control the weeds and pest infestation. The current review emphasized relay cropping as a tool for crop diversification and environmental sustainability with special focus on soil. Briefly, benefits, constraints, and opportunities of relay cropping keeping the goals of higher crop productivity and sustainability have also been discussed in this review. The research and knowledge gap in relay cropping was also highlighted in order to guide the further studies in future.
气候变化、土壤退化和自然资源枯竭正成为现代农业中作物生产力和环境可持续性面临的最突出挑战。在传统耕作系统的情况下，应对这些问题的机会有限。套作是一种多熟种植方法，在第二种作物收获前很久就将一种作物播种到生长着的第二种作物中。套作可以解决一些冲突，如可用资源利用效率低下、播种时间、肥料施用和土壤退化方面的争议。套作是一套复杂的不同资源高效利用技术，具有改善土壤质量、增加净收益、提高土地当量比以及控制杂草和害虫侵扰的能力。当前的综述强调套作是实现作物多样化和环境可持续性的一种手段，特别关注土壤。简而言之，本综述还讨论了套作在实现更高作物生产力和可持续性目标方面的益处、限制和机遇。还强调了套作方面的研究和知识差距以指导未来的进一步研究。
