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Project title:
„Crop diversification and weeds”
Acronym: PRODIVA
Programme: 7th EU Framework Programme
Project period: 01.03.2015–28.02.2018
Contract number: CoreOrganicPlus/PRODIVA/1381/2015
Consortium:
- Aarhus University, Denmark – Leader project
- Institute of Plant Protection – National Research Institute, Poland
- Natural Resources Institute (LUKE), Finland
- State Priekuli Plant Breeding Institute, Latvia
- Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
- University of Rostock, Germany
Project Coordinator: Bo Melander Prof. (Aarhus University)
e-mail: bo.melander@agro.au.dk
Project Coordinator from IPP – NRI: Roman Krawczyk Ph.D.
e-mail: r.krawczyk@iorpib.poznan.pl; phone + 48 61 864 91 41
About: PRODIVA will improve the understanding of crop diversification and its impact on weeds. The project seeks to produce results and guidelines for the application of crop diversification measures that will improve the management of weeds.
Weed problems remain to be a major constrain for the improvement of crop productivity in organic farming. There is a constant need for preventive tactics to limit undesired weed interference. Investigations undertaken in Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Poland and Germany aim to clarify the prospects of using crop diversification tactics for weed management purposes.
Despite the need for weed management to preserve crop yield, organic cropping systems strongly contribute to maintain and support diverse weed communities on arable fields. Direct control actions are motivated to instantly release the crop from weed interference. However, the reliance on direct tactics could be reduced through careful planning of cropping systems that mitigate severe weed problems and create a more balanced and manageable weed flora. Diversifying crop components in cropping systems is a way to achieve this but it has not been exploited in practise.
Main project acitvities:
- Relevant data from previous and running crop rotation experiments are extracted and analysed.
- The suppressive ability of cover crops against weeds will be quantified.
- Crop species mixtures and their relevance for weed suppression are experimentally studied.
- Similarly, variety mixtures of oat and spring barley varieties, respectively, are studied in field experiments in three countries.
- 200 fields with spring barley will be surveyed during two growing seasons in order to indentify any associations between cropping system diversity and weed flora.
- A database with all cropping information collected from the surveyed fields will be established.
Project website: http://projects.au.dk/coreorganicplus/research-projects/prodiva/