engleski

Agriculture in the Pannonian Basin facing new challenges related to climatic change

The Pannonian basin and the peri-Pannonian region are faced with changing climatic conditions and consequences already felt all over the region. Agriculture suffers from changing climatic elements, such as precipitation, temperature, weather extremes and evaporation rates, which impact production in direct and many indirect ways. Many techniques and technologies are offered as an adequate solution for adaptation and mitigation to climate change, but some of these really function. Conservation agriculture (CA) is one of the possible ways to combat primarily negative influence of climatic changes. CA includes three main bases for successful agriculture production in relation to agro- ecological conditions, namely: minimal set of soil tillage treatments (minimal soil disturbance), permanent soil cover (with crop or crop residue) and diversification in crop production (predominantly crop rotation). The applications of these principles will positively affect many others key elements of crop production (plant nutrition, soil matters, irrigation, plant breeding, crop protection, environmental considerations, etc.). Since the soil is still the basic media for crop production, soil tillage can play a major role in soil vulnerability to climatic change. Soil tillage affects many soil quality aspects: erosion (by water and wind), biogenity (organisms), organic matter, water content (storage, infiltration), compaction (anthropogenic or natural causes), nutrient status, pest and diseases (potential risk), weed infestation, in word physical, chemical and biological aspects. As soil tillage is closer to CA principles, we can expect less damages and potential problems and risks. At this moment, the application of CA in the Pannonian Basin is still very heterogeneous and persists on different levels and with different success in every country of the region. Since climatic changes do not follow national borders and since agriculture is extremely vulnerable to them, a common action to find adequate and effective measures to face climatic changes is an imperative. For successful approach to adaptation and mitigation processes, we need to create an adequate and useful information system (mainly about usually applied technology in crop production and agro-ecological conditions), which will be used as a starting point in processes of creating strategy and decision making. The adaptation and mitigation of climatic change needs to be based on long- term research and in relation with stronger regional cooperation with professional competence to reach the satisfying results in relation to agro-ecological conditions-crop production-environment.

agriculture ; Pannonian Basin ; challenges ; climatic change

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