The impact of pea genotypes in organic practices
The use of ‘Schinousa’ pea landrace reduced significantly the fresh shoot biomass on the harvesting date (8.95 ton ha-1) when compared to ‘Andros’ landrace, ‘Onward’ pea commercial variety and ‘Amorgos’ pea landrace (26.19 ton ha-1, 24.92 ton ha-1 and 17.66 ton ha-1, respectively).
Researchers from the Agricultural University of Athens and the School of Agricultural Sciences of the University of Thessaly carried out, from November 2014 to June 2015, a field-based experiment with pea (Pisum sativum L.) in a field certified for organic agriculture. The aim of the experiment was to test the performance of each pea genotype in organic farming crops as compared to conventional cropping.
Besides, the fresh yield pea seeds harvested throughout the cropping period was significantly influenced by the different genotypes used and not by the organic cropping practices, without any interaction between the cropping system and the genotypes.
As far as GHG’s are concerned, the cumulative amount of N2O emitted during the whole cropping period was higher when conventional farming practices were applied (401 g ha-1) when compared with organic farming (355 g ha-1), even though these differences were not statistically significant.
In addition, the use of different genotypes had significant impact on the cumulative N2O emissions. Indeed, ‘Andros’ presented the lower emission values (239 g ha-1) and ‘Schinousa’ the highest cumulative amount of N2O emitted (464 g ha-1). ‘Onward’ and ‘Amorgos’ on the hand gave similarcumulative amount of N2O emitted (409 g ha-1 and 403 g ha-1, respectively)
In conclusion, pea cultivars have shown significant differences in the cumulative values, but the fluxes were not majorly affected by the farming system (organic or conventional). Considering the use of peas within a rotation, forage legumes and legumes as intercrops would be beneficial both in terms of reducing fertilizer inputs and cumulative N2O emissions, but in the case of nitrification/denitrification, N2O flux would be dependent on N inputs through mineralization of the previous crop.