Producing more with less: reducing environmental impacts through an integrated soil-crop system management approach

Abstract

Balancing crop productivity with resource use efficiency and beneficial environmental consequences is essential for sustainable agricultural development worldwide. Various strategies and approaches have been proposed and debated, but turning the concept into management practices in the field with measurable outcomes over several scales remains a challenge. An innovative approach, Integrated Soil-Crop System Management (ISSM), for producing more grain with greater nutrient use efficiencies and less environmental pollution is presented. The ISSM approach has been used in China, in field experiments as well as in thousands of farmer fields, to substantially increase the yields of maize, rice and wheat while simultaneously increasing nitrogen use efficiency and reducing environmental footprints. The scientific principle, implementation strategy and procedures of ISSM are discussed and examples of its demonstrated successes at local and regional levels across China are given. Perspectives for further development of ISSM and expanding its potential impact are also proposed and discussed.

Keywords

China / environmental protection / food security / high-yielding / nitrogen management

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2015-CB150400) and the Innovative Group Grant of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31421092).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Zhenling Cui, Zhengxia Dou, Hao Ying, and Fusuo Zhang declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2019. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)