A nine-year study comparing a typical two-year corn and soybean rotation with a more intensive three-year rotation involving corn, cereal rye, soybean and winter wheat found that the three-year system can dramatically reduce nitrogen - an important crop nutrient - in farm runoff without compromising yield.
- Illinois News Bureau
The new findings are detailed in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science.
"Subterranean drainage pipes called tiles transport nitrogen, in the form of nitrate, from fields to streams, impairing downstream surface waters," the scientists wrote. Nitrate runoff from farms pollutes streams and lakes, some of which supply drinking water for nearby communities. Nitrates also are carried down major rivers like the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, contributing to a vast oxygen-starved "dead zone."
"For maximum crop production we need artificial drainage, in the form of tiles and ditches, across much of Illinois. Unfortunately, nitrate can be lost from the rooting zone with tile water," said Lowell Gentry, a researcher in natural resources and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who led the new study with Eric Miller, a grower and landowner in Piatt County, Illinois, where the research was conducted. "Our study was designed to see if a more diverse crop rotation could reduce tile nitrate loss and still be competitive with the conventional system of corn and soybean."
