Limited effects of crop foliar Si fertilization on a marginal soil under a future climate scenario.

ABSTRACT: Growing crops on marginal lands is a promising solution to alleviate the increasing pressure on agricultural land in Europe. Such crops will however be at the same time exposed to increased drought and pathogen prevalence, on already challenging soil conditions. Some sustainable practices, such as Silicon (Si) foliar fertilization, have been proposed to alleviate these two stress factors, but have not been tested under controlled, future climate conditions. We hypothesized that Si foliar fertilization would be beneficial for crops under future climate, and would have cascading beneficial effects on ecosystem processes, as many of them are directly dependent on plant health. We tested this hypothesis by exposing spring barley growing on marginal soil macrocosms (three with, three without Si

SUBMITTER: Rineau F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10772710 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature