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Publications

NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.

2016

Abstract

The Action plan for hay meadows in Norway is an instrument used to manage hay meadows of high biological value. The mowing management is regulated by a specific date and we aimed to assess the suitability of this date. We compared proportions of mature plants of species associated with semi-natural grasslands at the defined mowing date in 2014 and 2015. Numbers of mature species differed between the two years, but even in the warmest year the percentage of mature plants was only 44%. In order to plan a more successful agri-environmental scheme, the cutting date should be more site-specific and based on knowledge of the former practices that originally created and maintained the biological values.

To document

Abstract

Without herbicides, the control of Elymus repens relies on intensive tillage, often in the form of repeated post-harvest stubble cultivations followed by ploughing. This is costly and time-consuming and also increases the risk of nitrogen leaching. Our aim was to quantify the controlling effect on E. repens of single and repeated cultivation and differing time of cultivation in relation to spring cereal harvest. A 2-year experiment was conducted at two sites in the south and east of Sweden in 2011–2012 and 2012–2013. We compared no, single and repeated tine cultivation followed by mouldboard ploughing; the single cultivation was performed directly after harvest or 20 days after harvest; when repeated, the first cultivation was performed immediately or 5 days after harvest, followed by a second cultivation 20 days after harvest. Tine cultivation in combination with mouldboard ploughing resulted in 50–70% lower rhizome biomass, and increased average subsequent cereal yields by 0–130% compared with ploughing alone. Large E. repens populations appeared to be more efficiently reduced by tine cultivation than smaller populations. A single tine cultivation 20 days after harvest tended to result in a higher E. repens shoot density and more rhizome biomass in the subsequent year than tine cultivation directly after harvest. Additional cultivation 20 days after harvest did not improve control of E. repens or the subsequent cereal grain yield, compared with a single cultivation conducted directly after harvest. In conclusion, preventing the growth of E. repens during the early part of the post-harvest autumn period was more important than starving rhizomes with repeated cultivations.