Dr Chao Chen1, Andrew T James2
1CSIRO Agriculture and Food, Wembley, Australia, 2CSIRO Agriculture and Food, Saint Lucia, Australia
Biography:
Dr Chao Chen grew up in a rural village in the Northeastern part of China. The main crops are summer maize and soybeans. Chao received her PhD degree in ecology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She undertook postdoctoral studies at the Earth Institute of Columbia University and University of technology Sydney. She joined CSIRO in 2014. Her research currently focuses on integrating experiments, farm surveys and simulation to investigate G x E x M interactions and deliver innovations that improve farming system productivity under variable environments.
Abstract:
Western Australian cropping systems are facing the combined challenges of climate warming, maintaining soil fertility and managing weeds and diseases. Integrating new innovative break crops into cropping systems to address these challenges is urgently needed. This study explored the opportunity to sow the normally summer-grown legume soybean as a winter-spring sown break crop for cereals using a combined experimental and modelling approach. A 2-year experiment was conducted in Mingenew with first year trial sown in spring with two sowing dates and five soybean cultivars and second year experiment sown in winter. The APSIM model tested with the experimental data was used to explore the spatial-temporal characteristics of GxExM for soybean grown in Western Australia. The results show that there is a potential to grow soybean in northern wheatbelt as a winter break crop for both now and in the future, while in the southern wheatbelt, it could be grown as a spring-sown summer crop now with a potential to grow as a winter crop in warmer future. Future climate warming is likely to continue to impact winter-based cropping systems in Western Australia. The findings of this study would help Western Australian grain growers to tackle climate challenge and provide them both a new break crop and increased diversity of cropping options to increase soil fertility and manage weeds and diseases.