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Welcome to the Toolbox on Agricultural Diversification
Welcome to the wiki site on diversification in agriculture. This wiki is an interactive user-fed knowledge source of regionally relevant information about complementary means to diversify agricultural systems. Biological diversification is one of the most important means to make agriculture more sustainable and resilient.
Information included in this wiki comes from personal experience reports, from the scientific literature and experiments conducted in research projects this wiki is based on.
Moreover, this site gives Links to related resources such as policy briefs, practice abstracts, videos and related projects.
This knowledge base covers all aspects of diversification, from soil arganisms to intraspecific crop diversity:
- Species mixtures can generate services within the agricultural system such as weed control and plant health and therefore improve resource efficiency and help to reduce inputs, such as herbicides and fertilizers.
- Intraspecific diversity can be improved by cultivating variety mixtures and diverse evolving populations instead of genetically uniform inbred lines or hybrids.
- Cover crops, companion crops ("Living mulches") and fertility building leys "Subsidiary crops" help to improve soil fertility and, again, to reduce inputs.
- Conservation tillage is one of the most efficent means to improve soil biodiversity
This wiki is a living document that evolves through input from participants. We encourage all users with an interest in the site to sign up and start contributing.
Please see the link: How to edit Wiki for detailed instructions.
New cover crops for innovative agriculture (ZIL)
The Project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture. The aim of the project is to contribute to the development of cover crop-based minimum tillage systems in Germany and to intensify the cultivation of leguminous crops. For this purpose, new cover crop species will be provided for different requirements, new cultivation methods will be developed or tested, and their effects on ecosystem services will be investigated. ...more
