Argentina: Planting vetch after sugarcane harvest improves soils

Sugar cane is the second most important economic and social activity in northwest Argentina. However, its monoculture impacts the loss of ecosystem services. As a consequence, researchers from INTA Famaillá -Tucumán- developed a sugarcane-Vicia villosa intercropping system that showed, on an experimental scale, advantages over the monoculture system. The objective: promote climate smart technologies. "Knowledge of the harmful effects of cultivation on the environment motivated us, in 2018, to begin research on the use of ecosystem service crops in sugarcane," explained Luciana Martínez Calsina, researcher at INTA Famaillá and member of the Crops Group. Industrials that focuses on the development of this technology within the framework of the projects of the National Industrial Crops Program of INTA. In this sense, the specialist pointed out that in early sugarcane harvests - in June and July - and extra-early - in May - there is a period of four to six months in which the crop ...