Crop diversification for weed management in North European organic arable cropping systems. Introduction to the study of international research-network on diversification and weed management: PRODIVA.

Summary

The international research network PRODIVA aims to improved utilization of crop diversification for weed management in northern European organic arable cropping systems. The over-all aim is to support organic agriculture for the exploitation of crop diversification methods to improve weed management and still maintain a diverse weed flora. Hypothesized is that crop diversification can improve weed management while ensuring a diverse weed flora by the employment of: (I) pertinent crop sequencing that mitigates noxious weed species (II) improved cover crop establishment with selected competitive cover crop species (III) crop mixtures utilizing the resources better than sole crop species resulting in more weed suppression (IV) variety mixtures exerting a stronger pressure on weed development than the sole varieties. Objectives are: (I) to strengthen the scientific foundation for the employment of crop diversification, (II) to survey the weed situation in practice region-wise and link it to the agronomic measures applied (III) to bridge the information from the surveys with the scientific groundwork (IV) to disseminate important results and recommendation to extension services and growers. PRODIVA focuses on terminated and ongoing European research on crop rotation experiments with the inclusion of work packages on crop sequencing and cover crops (Finland, Latvia, Denmark), crop mixtures (Sweden, Poland), variety mixtures (Denmark, Poland, Latvia) and current crop diversity applications and their effect on weeds on farms (Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Latvia). This project has the duration of three years: 2015-2018.