Abstract
Intensive tillage, high fertiliser inputs, and plastic mulch on the soil surface are widely used by vegetable growers. A field investigation was carried out to quantify the impact of alternate land management and fertiliser practices designed to improve offsite water quality on the productivity of vegetable rotations within a sugarcane farming system in a coastal region of subtropical northeast Australia. Successive crops of capsicum and zucchini were grown in summer 2010–2011 and winter 2011, respectively, using four different management practices. These were ‘Conventional’—the current conventional practice using plastic mulch, bare inter-rows, conventional tillage, and commercial fertiliser inputs; ‘Improved’—a modified conventional system using plastic mulch in the cropped area, an inter-row vegetative mulch, zonal tillage, and reduced fertiliser rates; ‘Trash mulch’—using cane trash or forage sorghum residues instead of plastic mulch, with reduced fertiliser rates and minimum or zero tillage; and ‘Vegetative mulch’—using Rhodes grass or forage sorghum residues instead of plastic mulch, with minimum or zero tillage and reduced fertiliser rates. During the second vegetable crop (zucchini), each management practice was split to receive either soil test-based nutrient inputs or a common, luxury rate of nutrient addition. The ’Trash mulch’ and ‘Vegetative mulch’ systems produced up to 43% lower capsicum and zucchini yields than either of the plastic mulch systems. The relative yield difference between trash systems and plastic mulch management systems remained the same for both the soil test-based and high nutrient application strategies, suggesting that factors other than nutrition (e.g., soil temperature) were driving these differences.
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Claims 4
Claim · model-written summary
Trash and vegetative mulch systems produced up to 43% lower capsicum yields than plastic mulch systems.
- Treatment
- ’Trash mulch’ and ‘Vegetative mulch’ systemse1
- Outcome
- yieldse1
- Direction
- lowere1
- Value
- 43%e1
- Comparator
- either of the plastic mulch systemse1
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e1“The ’Trash mulch’ and ‘Vegetative mulch’ systems produced up to 43% lower capsicum and zucchini yields than either of the plastic mulch systems”
Claim · model-written summary
Trash and vegetative mulch systems produced up to 43% lower zucchini yields than plastic mulch systems.
- Taxon
- zucchini
Cucurbita pepo subsp. pepoe1 - Treatment
- ’Trash mulch’ and ‘Vegetative mulch’ systemse1
- Outcome
- yieldse1
- Direction
- lowere1
- Value
- 43%e1
- Comparator
- either of the plastic mulch systemse1
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e1“The ’Trash mulch’ and ‘Vegetative mulch’ systems produced up to 43% lower capsicum and zucchini yields than either of the plastic mulch systems”
Claim · model-written summary
The relative yield difference between mulch systems stayed the same under soil test-based and high nutrient strategies.
- Taxon
- capsicum and zucchiniCucurbita pepo subsp. pepo
Capsicume1 - Treatment
- soil test-based and high nutrient application strategiese2
- Outcome
- relative yield differencee2
- Direction
- remained the samee2
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e2“The relative yield difference between trash systems and plastic mulch management systems remained the same for both the soil test-based and high nutrient application strategies”
e1“capsicum and zucchini yields”
Claim · model-written summary
Factors other than nutrition, such as soil temperature, were likely driving the yield differences.
- Taxon
- capsicum and zucchiniCucurbita pepo subsp. pepoCapsicume1
- Outcome
- these differencese3
- Qualifier
- factors other than nutrition (e.g., soil temperature)e3
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e3“suggesting that factors other than nutrition (e.g., soil temperature) were driving these differences”
e1“capsicum and zucchini yields”
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mulching · yield · Cucurbita pepoResults differ
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