Wendling, Marina, Büchi, Lucie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1935-6176, Amossé, Camille, Jeangros, Bernard, Walter, Achim and Charles, Raphaël (2017) Specific interactions leading to transgressive overyielding in cover crop mixtures. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 241. pp. 88-99. ISSN 0167-8809 (doi:10.1016/j.agee.2017.03.003)

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Abstract

Growing mixtures of species instead of sole crops is expected to increase the ecosystem services provided by cover crops. This study aimed at understanding the interactions between species and investigating how they affect the performance of the mixture. Four species were combined in six bispecific mixtures in a field experiment. The performance of each species when grown in a mixture was compared to its performance as a sole crop at different sowing densities, to characterise the influence of intra- and interspecific competition for each species. Intra- and interspecific competition coefficients were quantified using a response surface design and the hyperbolic yield-density equation. Interactions between the four species ranged from facilitation to competition. Most of the mixtures exhibited transgressive overyielding. Without nitrogen (N) fertilisation, high complementarity between species allowed to achieve the highest biomass. With N fertilisation, high dominance of one mixture component should be avoided to achieve good performance. A revised approach in the use of the land equivalent ratio for the evaluation of cover crop mixtures is also proposed in this study. It allows to better identify transgressive overyielding in mixtures and to better characterise the effect of one species on the other within the mixture.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Intraspecific and interspecific competition Response surface design Resource partitioning Facilitation Relative dominance Land equivalency ratio (LER)
Subjects:	S Agriculture > S Agriculture (General)
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Engineering & Science Faculty of Engineering & Science > Natural Resources Institute Faculty of Engineering & Science > Natural Resources Institute > Agriculture, Health & Environment Department Faculty of Engineering & Science > Natural Resources Institute > Ecosystem Services Research Group
Last Modified:	21 Apr 2020 16:37
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/19202

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