| Target | Goal | Method |
| Soil |
Improve structure for better:
- Soil water/temp conditions
- Microbial and soil invert activity
- Rooting depth and architecture
- Reducing losses to the environment
|
- Conservation tillage: direct drill for cereals and beans, non-inversion tillage
for oilseed rape, standard soil cultivation for potato
- Carbon amendments: municipal green waste compost @10 t ha-1, straw incorporation
instead of baling, cover cropping (oil radish before potatoes, rye after beans,
before spring barley)
- Tied-ridging in potatoes tramlines
|
| Plant nutrients |
Reduce reliance on mineral fertiliser and increase resource use efficiency to:
- To reduce GHG emissions and carbon footprint
- Improve plant health to increase resilience to pests and disease
- Maintain yields with less non-renewable inputs
|
- Soil management (as above)
- Under-sown clover in winter oilseed rape (berseem) and spring barley (white)
to increase inputs of renewable N to the system
- Cover cropping to retain plant nutrients over winter
- Mineral N rates calculated on the basis of soil nutrient supply
- Soil and NDVI mapping for variable rate fertiliser application
- Biofortification using mineral applications to reduce fungicide inputs
- Test and select varieties with better resource use efficiency under low input
systems
|
| Biodiversity |
Enhance microbial, plant and invertebrate biodiversity for ecosystem services
- Viable pollinator populations for enhanced pollination of insect pollinated
crops
- Predation and parasitism for sustainable control of crop pests
- Carbon and nutrient cycling and enhanced nutrient availability through
beneficial microbial activity
|
- Targeted weed control for a diverse dicot, but non-competitive in-field weed
understorey
- IPM options to reduce requirement for crop protection inputs (e.g. blight
forecasting, disease resistant varieties, dose response curves and
thresholds)
- diverse field margins to support pollinators and natural enemies
|
