Multi-purpose cropping Sample Clauses

Multi-purpose cropping. Multi-purpose cropping can refer to the use of different parts of one crop for different pur- poses or it can point to the production of a crop and at the same time avoid negative or gen- erate positive environmental effects. The use of crop residues for bioenergy was the focus of the Horizon 2020 project S2Biom, where cost supply curves and biomass potentials have been compiled for all EU28 countries, Western Balkans, Moldova, Turkey and Ukraine. Xxx et al. (2015) suggested that dual-purpose sorghum (food and energy) provides a promising alter- native to continuous maize cropping with respect to soil health indicators. The Horizon 2020 project BECOOL is currently performing trials with sorghum and kenaf as dual-purpose crops. The irrigation of energy crops with wastewater is another aspect of multi-purpose cropping. It has been shown that growing willow SRC on wastewater irrigated fields in Estonia could re- duce N and P concentrations efficiently (Xxxx and Xxxxxxx, 2013). At the same time the irri- gation with wastewater increased wood yield by 41%. In an economic assessment the cost re- duction potential for biomass production in willow SRC by irrigation with wastewater or by adding sewage sludge was calculated (Xxxxxxxxx and Xxxxxxxxxx, 2011). With the wastewater irrigation biomass production cost reduction potentials of 25% and 30% were estimated for Sweden and Southern European countries, respectively. The cost reduction potential was based on estimated yield increase of 30% and 60% for Sweden and Southern Europe. Yield in- creases were expected to be higher for Southern European countries where water is a clear limiting factor. Irrigation with wastewater was also tested for perennial grasses. While peren- nial grasses can also effectively remove nutrients from wastewater, no yield increases were found for Arundo donax in Italy or switchgrass in Southwest USA when irrigated with wastewater compared to freshwater (Xxxxxxxxxx et al., 2017; Xxxx et al., 2012). The same is valid for urban wastewater irrigation compared to drainage water irrigation for giant xxxx in Italy (Borin et al., 2013). In practice, however, the use of wastewater has environmental and social concerns due to harmful substances, which need to be addressed when designing and managing such systems (Xxxxxxx et al., 2015). The second purpose in addition to biomass production can also be the purification of soil wa- ter from agricultural fields and ditches to mitigate groundwater N pollut...