Short-term dynamics of soil organic matter fractions and microbial activity in smallholder potato-legume intercropping systems

By S. Nyawade, Nancy N. Karanja, C. Gachene, H. I. Gitari, E. Schulte-Geldermann, M. Parker. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment. Applied Soil Ecology, 2019

92 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Continuous cultivation of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) in monoculture systems represents the greatest factor deteriorating soil organic matter (SOM) in smallholder farms. With an aim to breaking this norm, a 2-year field trial intercropping potato with two legumes: lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus) and dolichos (Lablab purpureus), was conducted in the upper-midland (1552 meters above sea level (masl.)), lower-highland (1854 masl.) and upper-highland (2552 masl.) agro-ecologies of Kenya. Residues from each cropping system were quantified at the end of each season and incorporated back into the soil at start of the subsequent season. A combined physical and density fractionation was used to separate the soil in macro-aggregates (>250 μm), micro-aggregates (250–50 μm) and silt plus clay fractions (

Subfields: Agronomy and Crop Science, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9a67852e42c467615e334eb8eb1ce02079dc4da2

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Agronomy and Crop Science

In Plant Science

Citations in the corpus

Revisiting intercropping indices with respect to potato-legume intercropping systems (2020, background): “Potato-legume intercropping is the main potato-based multiple cropping systems in Kenya, and it has received attention (Gitari et al., 2018a; and b, 2019a, and b, 2020; Nyawade, 2019a, b, and c, 2020a; and b).”
Controlling soil erosion in smallholder potato farming systems using legume intercrops (2019, background): “In East Africa, soil erosion occursmainly in the highlandswhere land scarcity forces crop production on the steep hillsides with slopes ranging between 10 and 55% (Athanase, 2013; Gitari et al., 2019; Nyawade et al., 2019).”