Title:
Summer Harvests Greatly Increase the Nitrogen Uptake of the Energy Grass Giant Reed
Author(s):
Ceotto, E., Cianchetta, S., Galletti, S.
Document(s):
Paper
Slide presentation
Abstract:
Little is known about the nitrogen (N) dynamic and the N uptake of giant reed managed with double harvest strategy. To investigate this issue, a field experiment was undertaken in 2015, and it is still on going, in the low Po Valley, Northern Italy. Treatments were: i) H1: double harvest, first time at the end of June + second time at the end of September; ii) H2: double harvest, first time at the end of July + second time at the end of September; iii) H3: a single harvest managed at the end of September. Each harvest treatment has received two fertilization regimes, fertilized with 250 kg N ha-1 and no fertilization (N0). Our main findings are: i) the N uptake for treatment H3 was 447 kg N with N supply of 250 kg ha-1 and 158 kg N ha-1 with N0; ii) when N fertilization was applied, the treatment H1 and H2 increased total N uptake by 37% and 67% respectively, compared to H3. In case of no fertilization the treatment H1-N0 increased N uptake by 22% compared to H3-N0, whereas no increase of N uptake was observed for H2-N0. Overall, our findings indicate that giant reed cropping systems based on double harvest are N demanding. Then, the environmental sustainability of such cropping systems is debatable and requires further scrutiny.
Keywords:
fertilization, harvesting, perennial energy crops, production
Topic:
Biomass Resources
Subtopic:
Biomass crops and energy grasses
Event:
26th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition
Session:
1CO.9.3
Pages:
140 - 142
ISBN:
978-88-89407-18-9
Paper DOI:
10.5071/26thEUBCE2018-1CO.9.3
Price:
FREE
