Optimizing multifunctional agroecosystems in irrigated dryland agriculture to restore soil carbon – Experiments and modelling

Abstract Irrigated dryland agroecosystems could become more sustainable if crop and soil management enhanced soil organic carbon (SOC). We hypothesized that combining high inputs from cover crops with no-tillage will increase long-term SOC stocks. Caatinga shrublands had been cleared in 1972 for arable crops and palm plantations before implementing field experiments on Mango and Melon systems (established in 2009 and 2012, respectively). Each of the two experiments were managed with no-till (NT) or conventional till (CT), and three types of cover cropping, either a plant mixture of 75% (PM1) or 25% (PM2) legumes, or spontaneous vegetation (SV). The RothC model was used with a daily timestep to simulate the soil moisture dynamics and C turnover for this dry climate. Carbon inputs were between 2.62 and 5.82 Mg C ha−1 year−1 and increased the depleted SOC stocks by 0.08 to 0.56 Mg C ha−1 year−1. Scenarios of continuous biomass inputs of ca. 5 Mg C ha−1 year−1 for 60 years are likely to increase SOC stocks in the mango NT beyond the original Caatinga SOC by between 19.2 and 20.5 Mg C ha−1. Under CT similar inputs would increase SOC stocks only marginally above depletion (2.75 to 2.47 Mg C ha−1). Under melon, annual carbon inputs are slightly greater (up to 5.5 Mg C ha−1 year−1) and SOC stocks would increase on average by another 8% to 22.3 to 20.6 Mg C ha−1 under NT and by 8 Mg C ha−1 under CT. These long-term simulations show that combining NT with high quality cover crops (PM1, PM2) would exceed SOC stocks of the initial Caatinga within 20 and 25 years under irrigated melon and mango cultivation, respectively. These results present a solution to reverse prior loss of SOC by replacing CT dryland agriculture with irrigated NT plus high input cover crops agroecosystems.