View article

Research has proved that integrated soil fertility management (ISFM) can increase crop yields at the field and farm scales. However, its uptake by smallholder farmers in Africa is often constrained by lack of technical guidelines on effective starting points and how the different ISFM options can be combined to increase crop productivity on a sustainable basis. A 4-year study was conducted on sandy soils (<10% clay) on smallholder farms in eastern Zimbabwe to assess how sequencing of different ISFM options may lead to incremental gains in soil productivity, enhanced efficiency of resource use, and increase crop yields at field scale. The sequences were primarily based on low-quality organic resources, nitrogen-fixing green manure and grain legumes, and mineral fertilizers. To enable comparison of legume and maize grain yields among treatments, yields were converted to energy (kilocalories) and protein (kg …