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Native plants for greening Mediterranean agroecosystems by Jiménez-Alfaro, Borja; Frischie, Stephanie; Stolz, Juliane; Gálvez-Ramírez, Cándido is a Agricultural and Biological Sciences article available to read on EtoBox.

What is Native plants for greening Mediterranean agroecosystems about?

In the upcoming United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a global challenge for scientists and practitioners will be to develop a well-functioning seed production sector on the basis of a sound species-selection process. To balance crop production with biodiversity functions in Mediterranean woody crops, agroecological practices suggest the need to move towards the establishment of herbaceous ground covers. However, establishing such plants requires a supply of suitable native seeds, which is currently unavailable. Here, we present a comprehensive process for selecting regionally adapted species that also emphasizes considerations for seed production. Using olive groves as a target system, we found that research on ground covers for regenerative agriculture has largely overlooked native species at the expense of commercial and ill-suited varieties. Our assessment of native annuals showed that 85% of the grasses and forbs evaluated exhibit a suite of ecological and production traits that can be tailored to meet the requirements of farmers, seed producers and environmental agencies. These findings suggest that many native species are neglected in agronomic research, despite be

Who reads Native plants for greening Mediterranean agroecosystems?

Author

Jiménez-Alfaro, Borja; Frischie, Stephanie; Stolz, Juliane; Gálvez-Ramírez, Cándido

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC; Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. (ISSN 2055-026X)

Published

2020

Language

EN

Field

Agricultural and Biological Sciences (Life Sciences)