One of the greatest challenges facing humanity is how to grow more food while reducing the negative impacts of agriculture upon the environment.
One of the greatest challenges facing humanity is how to grow more food while reducing the negative impacts of agriculture upon the environment. Our ability to do so requires ever-more efficient and sustainable agricultural practices. The promising news is that researchers have found out that the spatial pattern in which a farmer sows their crops is an important determinant of what they will reap.
"In the vast majority of cases, higher yields and fewer weeds are the result of sowing crops in a more uniform, grid-like pattern, where each plant is equidistant from its neighbouring plants, both within and between rows," says Professor Jacob Weiner of the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences.
Professor Weiner and his colleagues from Northeast Agricultural University in China conducted a large metastudy of research in the area to discover the impact of uniform spatial patterns on crop yields and weed growth. The study, now published in the prestigious serial Advances in Agronomy, demonstrated that a uniform seeding pattern resulted in higher yields in 76% of trials, and fewer weeds in 73% of trials.
Read more at University Of Copenhagen
Image by Hans Braxmeier from Pixabay
