Award details

S2N - Soil to Nutrition - Work package 3 (WP3) - Sustainable intensification - optimisation at multiple scales

Reference	BBS/E/C/000I0330
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Adrian Collins
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Dr Alice Milne, Professor Andrew Whitmore
Institution	Rothamsted Research
Department	Rothamsted Research Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	4,505,848
Status	Current
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/04/2017
End date	31/03/2023
Duration	59 months

Abstract

Sustainable intensification (SI) has emerged as a conceptualisation of the fundamental challenges facing the agricultural industry. Some of the science community are responding with programmes on agro-ecology, 'ecological intensification' and the delivery of public goods (the focus of the ASSIST programme). However, this approach on its own down-weighs the equally important additional pillars that must underpin true SI (production, environmental and social). The critical challenge that the S2N strategic programme, including this project, addresses is the mismatch in spatial and temporal scales in relevant components of SI: 1) mechanisms that regulate soil-plant-microbe interactions; 2) trade-offs between productivity, resilience and nutrient use efficiency; and 3) the scales of measurement used to inform land management for food production by farmers on one hand and the development and implementation of environmental/agricultural policy on the other. Experimental measurements are usually made at core/ quadrat spatial scales (cm2 to m2) and over short timescales; land managers operate at the field to farm/ estate scale (ha to km2) over seasonal or annual timeframes; policy makers and deliverers are interested in catchment, regional or national scales over years to decades, often in relation to legally-binding national/ international policies and legislation e.g. the EU Water Framework Directive. Exploration of the interactions between land management decisions and policy drivers inherently involves the merger of improved mechanistic understanding of efficiency of nutrient utilization (ENU) at the soil-plant level (WP1 0I310) and adaptive management on the farm (WP2 I0320) with mathematical upscaling methodologies which are dealt with in this project (WP 3 I0330). The principal aim of this WP is therefore to understand what mechanistic understanding links farm management to the effective functioning of environmental and food systems to deliver SI.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Not funded via Committee
Research Topics	Soil Science
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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