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The residue can be ploughed directly into the ground, or burned first. In contrast, no-till, strip-till or reduced-till agriculture practices are carried out to maximize crop residue cover. Simple line-transect measurements can be used to estimate residue coverage. [1] Process residues are materials left after the crop is processed into a ...
The four most commonly grown agricultural crops worldwide are sugarcane, maize, cereals and rice. [3] The total weight of all these crops is more than 16,500 billion kilograms per year. [ 4 ] Since 80% of this consists of agricultural waste, many tens of thousands of billions of kilograms of agricultural waste remain worldwide. [ 5 ]
Planting cover crops that keep the soil anchored and covered in off-seasons so that the soil is not eroded by wind and rain. Crop rotations [18] for row crops alternate high-residue crops with lower-residue crops to increase the amount of plant material left on the surface of the soil during the year to protect the soil from erosion.
Different types of tillage result in varying amounts of crop residue being incorporated into the soil profile. Conventional or intensive tillage typically leaves less than 15% of crop residues on a field, reduced tillage leaves 15–30%, and conservation tillage systems leave at least 30% on the soil surface. [10]
No-till farming (also known as zero tillage or direct drilling) is an agricultural technique for growing crops or pasture without disturbing the soil through tillage.No-till farming decreases the amount of soil erosion tillage causes in certain soils, especially in sandy and dry soils on sloping terrain.
Many crops are of interest for their ability to provide high yields of biomass. Some can be harvested multiple times each year. These include poplar trees and Miscanthus giganteus. The premier energy crop is sugarcane, which is a source of the readily fermentable sucrose and the lignocellulosic by-product bagasse.
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Cover crops manage soil erosion, soil fertility, soil quality, water, weeds, pests, diseases, biodiversity and wildlife in an agroecosystem—an ecological system managed and shaped by humans. Cover crops can increase microbial activity in the soil, which has a positive effect on nitrogen availability, nitrogen uptake in target crops, and crop ...