TY - JOUR
T1 - Effectiveness of conservation crop rotation for water pollutant reduction from agricultural areas
AU - Koropeckyj-Cox, Lydia
AU - Christianson, Reid D.
AU - Yuan, Yongping
N1 - Funding Information:
This project was supported in part by an appointment to the Research Participation Program at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Office of Research and Development (ORD), administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE), through an interagency agreement between the USEPA and the U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE). Although this article has been reviewed and approved for publication by the USEPA, the views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the USEPA or ORISE. The authors would like to thank Dr. Brent Johnson from USEPA, the journal editors, and the anonymous reviewers for their technical review and valuable comments and suggestions, which helped improve the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Legumes included in corn-based crop rotation systems provide a variety of benefits to the subsequent crops and potentially to the environment. This review aims to synthesize available data from the literature on legume N credits and the effects of crop rotations on water quality, as well as to analyze the cost benefits associated with different legume-corn rotation systems. We found that there was much variation in reported values for legume N credits to subsequent corn crops, from both empirical results and recommendations made by U.S. land grant universities. But despite inherent complexity, accounting for this contribution is critical when estimating optimal N fertilizer application rates as part of nutrient management. Results from research on the influence of crop rotations on water quality show that including legumes in corn-based rotation systems generally decreases nitrate-N concentrations in subsurface drainage discharge. Our cost analysis showed that incorporating legumes in cropping systems reduced N fertilizer and pesticide costs compared to conventional cropping systems, i.e., continuous corn and corn-soybean rotations, but extended rotations, such as corn-soybean-alfalfa-alfalfa-alfalfa, are not as profitable as conventional systems in the U.S. Midwest. In comparing continuous corn and corn-soybean rotations, although their impacts on water quality are not significantly different when using overall means from the literature data, corn-soybean rotations are more profitable than continuous corn. When using data from papers that directly compared the two, we found that switching from continuous corn to corn-soybean can provide a benefit of $5 per kg N loss reduction. The cost analysis methods used could be tailored to any location or management scenario with appropriate inputs and serve as a useful tool for assessing cost benefits for other agricultural conservation practices. Legume-corn crop rotations have the potential to be an effective conservation practice with the ultimate goal of improving water quality, and, with further research, these rotations could be made even more effective by integrating them into a multipractice system.
AB - Legumes included in corn-based crop rotation systems provide a variety of benefits to the subsequent crops and potentially to the environment. This review aims to synthesize available data from the literature on legume N credits and the effects of crop rotations on water quality, as well as to analyze the cost benefits associated with different legume-corn rotation systems. We found that there was much variation in reported values for legume N credits to subsequent corn crops, from both empirical results and recommendations made by U.S. land grant universities. But despite inherent complexity, accounting for this contribution is critical when estimating optimal N fertilizer application rates as part of nutrient management. Results from research on the influence of crop rotations on water quality show that including legumes in corn-based rotation systems generally decreases nitrate-N concentrations in subsurface drainage discharge. Our cost analysis showed that incorporating legumes in cropping systems reduced N fertilizer and pesticide costs compared to conventional cropping systems, i.e., continuous corn and corn-soybean rotations, but extended rotations, such as corn-soybean-alfalfa-alfalfa-alfalfa, are not as profitable as conventional systems in the U.S. Midwest. In comparing continuous corn and corn-soybean rotations, although their impacts on water quality are not significantly different when using overall means from the literature data, corn-soybean rotations are more profitable than continuous corn. When using data from papers that directly compared the two, we found that switching from continuous corn to corn-soybean can provide a benefit of $5 per kg N loss reduction. The cost analysis methods used could be tailored to any location or management scenario with appropriate inputs and serve as a useful tool for assessing cost benefits for other agricultural conservation practices. Legume-corn crop rotations have the potential to be an effective conservation practice with the ultimate goal of improving water quality, and, with further research, these rotations could be made even more effective by integrating them into a multipractice system.
KW - Conservation practice
KW - Cost analysis
KW - Crop rotation
KW - Nitrate
KW - Nutrient management
KW - Water quality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85105552974&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85105552974&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.13031/TRANS.14017
DO - 10.13031/TRANS.14017
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85105552974
SN - 2151-0032
VL - 64
SP - 691
EP - 704
JO - Transactions of the ASABE
JF - Transactions of the ASABE
IS - 2
ER -