Management of soil organic matter in semiarid Africa for annual cropping systems |
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Authors: | Francis Ganry Christian Feller Jean-Michel Harmand Hervé Guibert |
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Affiliation: | (1) CIRAD, TA 40/01, Avenue Agropolis, 34398 Montpellier, Cedex 5, France;(2) CENA-USP/IRD, Caixa Postal 96, 13400 970 Piracicaba/SP, Brazil |
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Abstract: | Ensuring sustainable agriculture in semiarid Africa requires the implementation of methods to balance nutrients and to conserve
soil organic matter (SOM). There is an urgent need to improve the management of all types of SOM input. In this paper; the
authors review a wide range of agricultural practices and discuss their advantages, limitations and feasibility. They distinguish
‘traditional systems’ such as traditional fallow, parkland and manuring from ‘improved systems’ such as ‘improved fallow’,
forest fallow, alley cropping, cover crops and application of composted manure. Biomass production (BMP) for ‘improved systems’
is mainly linked: (i) for agroforestry, to the tree species used in forest fallow, to the synchronization of nutrient supply
by the soil with the cereal demand in alley cropping, and generally to the efficiency of the root system and its development
with the depth; (ii) for cover crops, BMP is mainly linked to the initial soil fertility and to the ecological zone: establishment
and management of cover crops are not yet fully mastered under some conditions such as an annual rainfall below 800 mm and/or
on very clayey soils; (iii) for manure, BMP is mainly linked to the improvement of fallow in order to ensure sufficient forage
resources. Because semiarid Africa is mainly a livestock zone, the authors emphasise manure: constraints, quality indicators
and tools used to encourage its production, are analysed. Thus it was concluded that the intensification of manure production
and its rational use in semiarid African regions, threatened by drought and malnutrition, is very important: this cannot be
separated from the production of plant biomass, whose possibilities have been examined above.
This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. |
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Keywords: | agroforestry cover crops forage manure organic matter semiarid region of Africa |
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