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Resilience of Organic and Conventional Production Systems to Drought

Context

As a result of global climate change, some of the most severe weather events, including drought events, will become more frequent in Europe over the next 50 to 100 years. Thus, farming practices have to be developed that ensure food security, but so far, it is unclear which farming systems are most resilient against climate change. Thus, we will compare the main Swiss arable farming systems (organic arable farming with tillage, organic arable farming with reduced tillage, conventional arable farming with tillage and conventional arable farming without tillage) and test their response to simulated summer drought (Qing Sun, Emily Hagen).

Hypotheses

Our over-arching hypotheses are that

(1) organic farming is more resilient to summer drought than conventional farming because crop yields and thus water use are lower and because plant symbionts, known to provide drought and stress resilience, are more abundant in organic farming systems;

(2) reduced tillage or no tillage are more resilient to summer drought than tillage because reduced tillage stabilizes soil structure and improves water availability to crops which in turn ensures plant productivity; and

(3) despite lower yields, economic profits per hectare, are equal or even higher under drought conditions for organic than for conventional farming because prices are higher for organic products and yield reductions are expected to be larger for conventional than for organic farming.

Complementary project

In an additional project, co-financed by the Chinese Scholarship Council (Yujie Liu), we will test the provisioning of ecosystem services of these four farming systems.  

RELOAD on TV

Drought in Switzerland: Raphael Wittwer from Agroscope, a partner within our joint project, talks with the external page SRF about first results from the manipulation experiment, simulating extreme drought over arable land (in German). This even made it into the external page Tagesschau (see 16:24 to 18:34 min; in German)!! (15 September 2018)

The RELOAD project in the Swiss documentary show "external page Einstein" (in German). See which techniques and measurements are being used. The first results: Simulated drought, stronger than the 2018 drought in Switzerland, reduced corn yields significantly. Watch the full show (about 31 min) or the parts referring to RELOAD (1:30 to 4:41, 6:52 to 8:28, 14:10 to 16:28, 20:20 to 22:25, 27:08 to 29:33 min). (6 December 2018)

RELOAD in ETH Globe

The newest issue of Download Globe (PDF, 7.4 MB), the magazine of ETH Zurich and the ETH Alumni, is entitled "Smart food" and puts food systems into the focus. The RELOAD project is one of the highlighted examples of ETH research working towards sustainable solutions for the food system.  

Publications

Wittwer RA, Klaus VH, Miranda Oliveira E, Sun Q, Liu Y, Gilgen AK, Buchmann N, van der Heijden MGA (2023) Limited capability of organic farming and conservation tillage to enhance agroecosystem resilience to severe drought. Agricultural Systems 211: 103721, doi: external page 10.1016/j.agsy.2023.103721

Liu Y, Silva Duarte Gicele, Sun Q, Gilgen AK, Wittwer R, an der Heijden MGA, Buchmann N, Klaus VH (2022) Severe drought rather than cropping system determines litter decomposition in arable systems. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 338: 108078, doi: external page 10.1016/j.agee.2022.108078

Sun Q, Klaus VH, Wittwer R, Liu Y, van der Heijden MGA, Gilgen AK, Buchmann N (2022) Water uptake patterns of pea and barley responded to drought but not to cropping systems. Biogeosciences 19: 1853-1869, doi: external page 10.5194/bg-19-1853-2022

Liu Y, Bachofen C, Wittwer R, Silva Duarte G, Sun Q, Klaus VH, Buchmann N (2022) Using PhenoCams to track crop phenology and explain the effects of different cropping systems on yield. Agricultural Systems 195: 103306, doi: external page 10.1016/j.agsy.2021.103306

Sun Q, Gilgen AK, Signarbieux C, Klaus VH, Buchmann N (2021) Cropping systems alter hydraulic traits of barley but not pea grown in mixture. Plant Cell & Environment 44: 2912-2924, doi: external page 10.1111/pce.14054

Sun Q, Klaus VH, Wittwer R, Liu Y, van der Heijden MGA, Gilgen AK, Buchmann N (2021) Water uptake patterns of pea and barley responded to drought but not to cropping systems. Biogeosciences Discussions, doi: external page 10.5194/bg-2021-217 [preprint]

Garland G, Banerjee S, Edlinger A, Miranda Oliveira E, Herzog C, Wittwer R, Philippot L, Maestre FT, van der Heijden MGA (2021) A closer look at the functions behind ecosystem multifunctionality: A review. Journal of Ecology 109: 600-613, doi: external page 10.1111/1365-2745.13511