Effect of organic conservation agriculture on N balance: first results of the SMOCA project

The SMOCA (Smart Management Organic Conservation Agriculture) project aims at integrating conservation agriculture and organic farming in three of the most representative scenarios in Italy: (i) arable field crops, (ii) field vegetables, (iii) tree fruit orchards. Maximising the advantages of organic and conservative systems has been pursued through the “intensification” of the “ecological efficiency” through smart and advanced techniques. Innovative machines for cover crops (CC) termination, minimum tillage, direct seeding/transplanting and physical weed control have been made “ex-novo” on purpose or optimized for each scenario. Following a common scheme, three different cropping systems were compared by each research unit: - Integrated control (INT): conventional integrated farming system (herbicides and agrochemicals allowed, ordinary soil tillage, no CC use); - Traditional organic (ORG): organic farming system which includes reduced soil tillage, the use of CC, preventive and direct non-chemical weed control methods; - Advanced organic (ORG+): deep integration between organic farming and conservative techniques. It includes a permanent green cover of the soil, no-tillage, physical weed control, the use of CC as living or dead mulches. The study of the overall sustainability of the three systems included the following aspects: - agronomical (e.g. yield, N uptake, weed development, product quality, etc.); - environmental and energetic (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, C and N balance, LCA, etc.). In the present contribution, the N balance and the relevant agronomic implications for the DSA3 research unit will be presented and discussed