A multi-trait analysis of crops and soils under dry-farmed and irrigated treatment
Climate change models predict increasingly hot and dry weather conditions, raising concerns about impacts on agricultural production and food security in the decades to come. Organic dry farming is a sustainable farming practice that allows growers to produce crops under hot and dry conditions with next to zero irrigation and grower input.
Dry-farming has many benefits for the grower and for the environment, including improving
aspects of soil health. Our goal is to investigate the traits that allow dry-farmed crops to succeed while measuring the impact this practice has on key soil attributes, and to communicate our findings to growers. A long-term goal is to contribute to breeding eorts to improve the yield and drought resilience of dry-farmed crops.
Researchers will investigate correlations between dry-farmed Hopi bean and Dirty Girl tomato
crops with various elements of soil chemistry, including nutrient composition, moisture levels, and texture.
The objectives of this research project are:
- To provide new insight into the drought physiology of dry-farmed Dirty Girl tomatoes and Hopi beans relative to standard Slicer tomatoes and French green beans under dry-farm and irrigation regimes. The findings will be contextualized with crop yield and quality.
- To investigate essential soil attributes such as texture, moisture and mineral content in forms of nitrogen and phosphorus under dry-farmed and irrigated regimes, in association with both crops.
- To capture the relationships between plant physiology and soil nutrients using regression analyses, or other appropriate models.
Center for Agroecology/UCSC participants: Jarmila Pitterman, Vidi Castro, Hannah Waterhouse, Darryl Wong
Funding: Ida and Robert Gordon Family Foundation