Macholdt Janna, Hadasch Steffen, Macdonald Andrew, Perryman Sarah, Piepho Hans-Peter, Scott Tony, Styczen Merete Elisabeth, Storkey Jonathan
Professorship of Agronomy, Institute of Agriculture and Nutritional Sciences, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Betty-Heimann-Strasse 5, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany.
Biostatistics Unit, Institute of Crop Science, University of Hohenheim, Fruwirthstrasse 23, 70599 Stuttgart, Germany.
Agron Sustain Dev. 2023;43(3):37. doi: 10.1007/s13593-023-00885-w. Epub 2023 Apr 26.
The management of climate-resilient grassland systems is important for stable livestock fodder production. In the face of climate change, maintaining productivity while minimizing yield variance of grassland systems is increasingly challenging. To achieve climate-resilient and stable productivity of grasslands, a better understanding of the climatic drivers of long-term trends in yield variance and its dependence on agronomic inputs is required. Based on the Park Grass Experiment at Rothamsted (UK), we report for the first time the long-term trends in yield variance of grassland (1965-2018) in plots given different fertilizer and lime applications, with contrasting productivity and plant species diversity. We implemented a statistical model that allowed yield variance to be determined independently of yield level. Environmental abiotic covariates were included in a novel criss-cross regression approach to determine climatic drivers of yield variance and its dependence on agronomic management. Our findings highlight that sufficient liming and moderate fertilization can reduce yield variance while maintaining productivity and limiting loss of plant species diversity. Plots receiving the highest rate of nitrogen fertilizer or farmyard manure had the highest yield but were also more responsive to environmental variability and had less plant species diversity. We identified the days of water stress from March to October and temperature from July to August as the two main climatic drivers, explaining approximately one-third of the observed yield variance. These drivers helped explain consistent unimodal trends in yield variance-with a peak in approximately 1995, after which variance declined. Here, for the first time, we provide a novel statistical framework and a unique long-term dataset for understanding the trends in yield variance of managed grassland. The application of the criss-cross regression approach in other long-term agro-ecological trials could help identify climatic drivers of production risk and to derive agronomic strategies for improving the climate resilience of cropping systems.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13593-023-00885-w.
气候适应型草地系统的管理对于稳定家畜饲料生产至关重要。面对气候变化，在维持草地系统生产力的同时尽量减少产量波动日益具有挑战性。为实现草地的气候适应型和稳定生产力，需要更好地了解产量波动长期趋势的气候驱动因素及其对农艺投入的依赖性。基于英国洛桑试验站的公园草地试验，我们首次报告了在施用不同肥料和石灰的地块中草地产量波动的长期趋势（1965 - 2018年），这些地块具有不同的生产力和植物物种多样性。我们实施了一个统计模型，该模型能够独立于产量水平来确定产量波动。环境非生物协变量被纳入一种新颖的交叉回归方法，以确定产量波动的气候驱动因素及其对农艺管理的依赖性。我们的研究结果表明，充足的石灰施用和适度施肥可以减少产量波动，同时维持生产力并限制植物物种多样性的丧失。施用最高氮肥或农家肥比例的地块产量最高，但对环境变异性也更敏感，植物物种多样性较少。我们确定3月至10月的水分胁迫天数和7月至8月的温度为两个主要气候驱动因素，它们解释了约三分之一观察到的产量波动。这些驱动因素有助于解释产量波动一致的单峰趋势——在大约1995年达到峰值，之后波动下降。在此，我们首次提供了一个新颖的统计框架和一个独特的长期数据集，用于理解管理草地产量波动的趋势。交叉回归方法在其他长期农业生态试验中的应用有助于识别生产风险的气候驱动因素，并推导出提高种植系统气候适应能力的农艺策略。
在线版本包含可在10.1007/si3593 - 023 - 00885 - w获取的补充材料。
