Greenhouse gas emissions and crop yield in no-tillage systems: A meta-analysis

Yawen Huang; Wei Ren; Lixin Wang; Dafeng Hui; John H. Grove; Xiaojuan Yang; Bo Tao; Ben Goff

doi:10.1016/j.agee.2018.09.002

Greenhouse gas emissions and crop yield in no-tillage systems: A meta-analysis

Yawen Huang
, Wei Ren
, Lixin Wang
, Dafeng Hui
, John H. Grove
, Xiaojuan Yang
, Bo Tao
, Ben Goff

Plant and Soil Sciences

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

251 Scopus citations

Abstract

No-tillage (NT) has been touted as one of several climate-smart agriculture (CSA) management practices that improve food security and enhance agroecosystem resilience to climate change. However, the sustainable effectiveness of NT greatly depends on trade-offs between NT-induced changes in crop yield and greenhouse gas (GHG, i.e. CH₄, CO₂, and N₂O) emissions. Such trade-offs are regulated by climate fluctuations and heterogeneous soil conditions and have not been well addressed. Supporting CSA management decisions requires advancing our understanding of how NT affects crop yield and GHG emissions in different agroecological regions. In this study, a meta-analysis was conducted using 740 paired measurements from 90 peer-reviewed articles to assess the effects of NT on crop yield, GHG emissions, and the global warming potential (GWP) of major cereal cropping systems. Compared to conventional tillage (CT), NT reduced in GHG emissions and increased crop yield in dry, but not humid, climates, and reduced in the GWP at sites with acidic soils. Across different cropping systems, NT enhanced barley yield by 49%, particularly in dry climates, and it decreased the GWP of rice fields through a 22% reduction in both CO₂ and CH₄ emissions. Our synthesis suggests that NT is an effective CSA management practice because of its potential for climate change mitigation and crop yield improvement. However, the net effect of NT (relative to CT) was influenced by several environmental and agronomic factors (climatic conditions, tillage duration, soil texture, pH, crop species). Therefore, agroecological setting must be taken into consideration when conducting a comparative evaluation of different tillage practices.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	144-153
Number of pages	10
Journal	Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment
Volume	268
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2018.09.002
State	Published - Dec 1 2018

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier B.V.

Funding

This is publication No.17-06-102 of the Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station and is published with the approval of the Director. L. Wang acknowledges partial support from the USDA grant (2014-51130-22492). X. Yang was supported as part of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL) Terrestrial Ecosystem Science Science Focus Area (TES SFA), funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research. We thank Mark S. Coyne for the comments and suggestions on the manuscript and Sloane Ritchey for the proofreading and editing. We also thank Xiongxiong Bai and Yanjun Yang for help with data assembly.

Funders	Funder number
U.S. Department of Energy EPSCoR
U.S. Department of Agriculture	2014-51130-22492
Office of Science Programs
Biological and Environmental Research
Oak Ridge National Laboratory

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 2 Zero Hunger
SDG 13 Climate Action

Keywords

Climate change mitigation
Crop yield
Greenhouse gas emissions
No-tillage

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Ecology
Animal Science and Zoology
Agronomy and Crop Science

Access to Document

10.1016/j.agee.2018.09.002

Cite this

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title = "Greenhouse gas emissions and crop yield in no-tillage systems: A meta-analysis",

abstract = "No-tillage (NT) has been touted as one of several climate-smart agriculture (CSA) management practices that improve food security and enhance agroecosystem resilience to climate change. However, the sustainable effectiveness of NT greatly depends on trade-offs between NT-induced changes in crop yield and greenhouse gas (GHG, i.e. CH4, CO2, and N2O) emissions. Such trade-offs are regulated by climate fluctuations and heterogeneous soil conditions and have not been well addressed. Supporting CSA management decisions requires advancing our understanding of how NT affects crop yield and GHG emissions in different agroecological regions. In this study, a meta-analysis was conducted using 740 paired measurements from 90 peer-reviewed articles to assess the effects of NT on crop yield, GHG emissions, and the global warming potential (GWP) of major cereal cropping systems. Compared to conventional tillage (CT), NT reduced in GHG emissions and increased crop yield in dry, but not humid, climates, and reduced in the GWP at sites with acidic soils. Across different cropping systems, NT enhanced barley yield by 49\%, particularly in dry climates, and it decreased the GWP of rice fields through a 22\% reduction in both CO2 and CH4 emissions. Our synthesis suggests that NT is an effective CSA management practice because of its potential for climate change mitigation and crop yield improvement. However, the net effect of NT (relative to CT) was influenced by several environmental and agronomic factors (climatic conditions, tillage duration, soil texture, pH, crop species). Therefore, agroecological setting must be taken into consideration when conducting a comparative evaluation of different tillage practices.",

keywords = "Climate change mitigation, Crop yield, Greenhouse gas emissions, No-tillage",

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T2 - A meta-analysis

AU - Huang, Yawen

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AU - Grove, John H.

AU - Yang, Xiaojuan

AU - Tao, Bo

AU - Goff, Ben

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ER -

Greenhouse gas emissions and crop yield in no-tillage systems: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

UN SDGs

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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Cite this