Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-r5zm4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-26T08:47:50.164Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Conservative Precision Agriculture: an assessment of technical feasibility and energy efficiency within the LIFE+ AGRICARE project

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2017

Donato Cillis ,
Andrea Pezzuolo ,
Francesco Marinello ,
Bruno Basso ,
Nicola Colonna ,
Lorenzo Furlan  and
Luigi Sartori
Donato Cillis
Affiliation:
TeSAF, Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry, University of Padova, Viale dell’Università 16, Legnaro, Italy
Andrea Pezzuolo*
Affiliation:
TeSAF, Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry, University of Padova, Viale dell’Università 16, Legnaro, Italy
Francesco Marinello
Affiliation:
TeSAF, Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry, University of Padova, Viale dell’Università 16, Legnaro, Italy
Bruno Basso
Affiliation:
Department of Geological Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
Nicola Colonna
Affiliation:
Unità Tecnica Sviluppo Sostenibile ed Innovazione del Sistema Agro-Industriale - ENEA
Lorenzo Furlan
Affiliation:
Veneto Agricoltura, Settore Ricerca Agraria, Viale dell’Università 14, Legnaro, Italy
Luigi Sartori
Affiliation:
TeSAF, Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry, University of Padova, Viale dell’Università 16, Legnaro, Italy
*
† E-mail: andrea.pezzuolo@unipd.it
Get access

Abstract

The integration of conservation agriculture with the benefits of precision farming represents an innovative feature aimed to achieve better economic and environmental sustainability. The synergy between these principles was assessed through a technical feasibility and energy efficiency to define the best approach depending on different agricultural systems, spatial and temporal field variability. The study compares three conservation tillage techniques supported by precision farming with conventional tillage in a specific crop rotation: wheat, rapeseed, corn and soybean. The preliminary results show a positive response of precision farming in all the conservation tillage systems, increasing yields until 22%. The energy efficiency achieves highest level in those techniques supported by precision farming, gaining peak of 9% compared to conventional tillage.

Keywords

conservation tillageenvironmental sustainabilitytechnical feasibilityenergy efficiency
Type
Tillage and Seeding
Information
Advances in Animal Biosciences , Volume 8 , Special Issue 2: Papers presented at the 11th European Conference on Precision Agriculture (ECPA 2017), John McIntyre Centre, Edinburgh, UK, July 16–20 2017 , July 2017 , pp. 439 - 443
Copyright
© The Animal Consortium 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barut, ZB, Ertekin, C and Karaagac, HA 2011. Tillage effects on energy use for corn silage in Mediterranean Coastal of Turkey. Energy 36, 5466–5475.Google Scholar
Basso, B, Ritchie, JT, Grace, PR and Sartori, L 2006. Simulation of tillage systems impact on soil biophysical properties using the SALUS model. Italian Journal of Agronomy 4, 677–688.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Basso, B, Dumont, B, Cammarano, D, Pezzuolo, A, Marinello, F and Sartori, L 2016. Environmental and economic benefits of variable rate nitrogen fertilization in a nitrate vulnerable zone. Science of Total Environment 545–546, 227–235.Google Scholar
Bertocco, M, Basso, B, Sartori, L and Martin, EC 2008. Evaluating energy efficiency of site-specific tillage in maize in NE Italy. Bioresource Technology 99, 6957–6965.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bilalis, D, Kamariari, PE, Karkanis, A, Efthimiadou, A, Zorpas, A and Kakabouki, I 2013. Energy inputs, output and productivity in organic and conventional maize and tomato production, under Mediterranean conditions. Notulae Botanicae Horti Agrobotanici Cluj-Napoca 41, 190–194.Google Scholar
Canakci, M, Topakci, M, Akinci, I and Ozmerzi, A 2005. Energy use pattern of some field crops and vegetable production: Case study for Antalya Region, Turkey. Energy Conversion and Management 46, 655–666.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Celik, A, Altikat, S and Way, TR 2013. Strip tillage width effects on sunflower seed emergence and yield. Soil & Tillage Research 131, 20–27.Google Scholar
Derpsch, R, Friedrich, T, Kassam, A and Hongwen, L 2010. Current status of adoption of no-till farming in the world and some of its main benefits. International Journal of Agricultural and Biological Engineering 3, 1–26.Google Scholar
Dzotsi, KA, Basso, B and Jones, JW 2013. Development, uncertainty and sensitivity analysis of the simple SALUS crop model in DSSAT. Ecological Modelling 260, 62–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fridgen, JJ, Kitchen, NR, Sudduth, KA, Drummond, ST, Wiebold, WJ and Fraisse, CW 2004. Management Zone Analyst (MZA): Software for Subfield Management Zone Delineation. Agronomy Journal 96, 100–108.Google Scholar
Holland, JM 2004. Environmental consequences of adopting conservation tillage in Europe: reviewing the evidence. Agricultural Ecosystems and Environment 103, 1–25.Google Scholar
Lal, R 2001. Potential of desertification control to sequester carbon and mitigate the greenhouse effect. Climate Change 15, 35–72.Google Scholar
Lal, R 2004. Soil carbon sequestration impacts on global climate change and food security. Science 304, 1623–1627.Google Scholar
Licht, MA, Lenssen, AW and Elmore, RW 2016. Corn (Zea mays L.) seeding rate optimization in Iowa, USA. Precision Agriculture 17, 1–18.Google Scholar
Mandal, S, Roy, S, Das, A, Ramkrushna, GI, Lal, R, Verma, BC, Kumar, A, Singh, RK and Layek, J 2015. Energy efficiency and economics of rice cultivation systems under subtropical Eastern Himalaya. Energy for Sustainable Development 28, 115–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marinello, F, Pezzuolo, A, Cillis, D, Chiumenti, A and Sartori, L 2017. Traffic effects on soil compaction and sugarbeet (Beta vulgaris L.) taproot quality parameters. Spanish Journal of Agricultural Research 15. in press.Google Scholar
Nelson, RG, Hellwinckel, CM, Brandt, CC, West, TO, Ugarte, DL and Marland, G 2009. Energy use and carbon dioxide emissions from cropland production in the United States, 1990-2004. Journal of Environmental Qualily 38, 418–425.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pezzuolo, A, Basso, B, Marinello, F and Sartori, L 2014. Using SALUS model for medium and long term simulations of energy efficiency in different tillage systems. Applied Mathematical Sciences 8, 129–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sartori, L, Basso, B, Bertocco, M and Oliviero, G 2005. Energy use and economic evaluation of a three-year crop rotation for conservation and organic farming in NE Italy. Biosystems Engineering 91, 245–256.Google Scholar
Singh, KP, Prakash, V, Srinivas, K and Srivastva, AK 2008. Effect of tillage management on energy-use efficiency and economics of soybean (Glycine max) based cropping systems under the rainfed conditions in North-West Himalayan Region. Soil & Tillage Research 100, 78–82.Google Scholar
Unakitan, G, Hurma, H and Yilmaz, F 2010. An analysis of energy use efficiency of canola production in Turkey. Energy 35, 3623–3627.Google Scholar
Zhang, X, Shi, L, Jia, X, Seielstad, G and Helgason, C 2009. Zone mapping application for precision-farming: a decision support tool for variable rate application. Precision Agriculture 11, 103–114.Google Scholar