The effect of long-term planting of poplar trees on the morphology and yield of neighboring summer maize on cropland
Description
With the continuous intensification of urbanization, there has been a large-scale abandonment and non-agricultural transfer of cropland. In order to avoid losses caused by abandonment, farmers working in cities have converted part of their farmland into economic forests. However, this transfer not only reduces the direct food loss caused by the reduction of cropland area, but also indirectly affects the food production of neighboring cropland. Therefore, in this study, five agroforestry interfaces were selected to explore the effects of long-term planting of economic forests on the production process of neighboring crops, using the most common economic forest species (poplar) and a typical crop (summer corn) as examples. The results showed that long-term planting of poplar had a significant effect on the morphological structure, yield and dry matter distribution of neighboring summer maize. The influence distance decreased with the increase of distance. The distance of influence on morphological structure was 5-6 meters, and the distance of influence on yield and dry matter distribution was 4 meters. The process of dry matter distribution had different effects on final yield and total dry matter of summer maize. Therefore, this study is of great significance for evaluating the impact of cropland transfer to forest land.