1. Increasing plant diversity with border crops reduces insecticide use and increases crop yield in urban agriculture.
- Author
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Wan NF, Cai YM, Shen YJ, Ji XY, Wu XW, Zheng XR, Cheng W, Li J, Jiang YP, Chen X, Weiner J, Jiang JX, Nie M, Ju RT, Yuan T, Tang JJ, Tian WD, Zhang H, and Li B
- Subjects
- Brassica rapa growth & development, China, Cities, Pest Control methods, Solanum melongena growth & development, Zea mays growth & development, Agriculture methods, Biodiversity, Crops, Agricultural growth & development, Insecticides administration & dosage, Oryza growth & development, Glycine max growth & development
- Abstract
Urban agriculture is making an increasing contribution to food security in large cities around the world. The potential contribution of biodiversity to ecological intensification in urban agricultural systems has not been investigated. We present monitoring data collected from rice fields in 34 community farms in mega-urban Shanghai, China, from 2001 to 2015, and show that the presence of a border crop of soybeans and neighboring crops (maize, eggplant and Chinese cabbage), both without weed control, increased invertebrate predator abundance, decreased the abundance of pests and dependence on insecticides, and increased grain yield and economic profits. Two 2 year randomized experiments with the low and high diversity practices in the same locations confirmed these results. Our study shows that diversifying farming practices can make an important contribution to ecological intensification and the sustainable use of associated ecosystem services in an urban ecosystem., Competing Interests: NW, YC, YS, XJ, XW, XZ, WC, JL, YJ, XC, JW, JJ, MN, RJ, TY, JT, WT, HZ, BL No competing interests declared, (© 2018, Wan et al.)
- Published
- 2018
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