Project: Fertility building management measures in organic cropping systems
The project FertilCrop will address sustainable crop management techniques that will make efficient use of the interface to other plants, to the structured and stratified soil matrix, to beneficial microorganisms, and to the carbon and nitrogen cycle. The project targets organic farmers and will work in close connection with them in developing tools and decision support systems tailored to their needs. Participants of the project come from 12 European countries from research fields of agronomy, biology, crop sciences, soil sciences, microbiology, modelling and social sciences and experience in direct interchange with farmers and their organisations. The project builds on the network and findings of the previous TILMAN-ORG project, in which half of the project partners were participating. The previous project built on numerous field trials and farm networks on reduced tillage and green manures, which will be used again in FertilCrop, enriched with other field studies from new partners. Focus of FertilCrop are farming systems using reduced soil tillage, cover crops, adapted crop rotations and mixed cropping as well as orchards. Thematic work-packages address the competition weeds in crop stands, the physical properties of stratified soils that accumulate organic matter in top soil layers but often show compaction in the deeper horizons, the distribution of soil organisms along the soil profile and their influence on soil functions, review on the knowledge about nutrient losses to the aquatic environment and the atmosphere, and modelling the reduction of emissions and soil carbon sequestration. FertilCrop will develop tools with and for farmers to recognize good soil fertility and will develop in an iterative way decision support systems to optimize management strategies. The results will directly find their way into farming practice as farmers will be included in the project.
| Acronym | FertilCrop (Reference Number: 563) |
| Duration | 01/01/2015 - 01/01/2018 |
| Project Topic | 1. Crop: Plant/Soil interaction in organic crop production |
| Website | visit project website |
| Network | CORE Organic Plus |
| Call | Transnational Research in Organic Food and Farming Systems (2014) |