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Small-scale farming in drylands: new models for resilient practices of millet and sorghum cultivation

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dc.contributor.author Ruiz-Giralt, Abel
dc.contributor.author Biagetti, Stefano
dc.contributor.author Madella, Marco
dc.contributor.author Lancelotti, Carla
dc.date.accessioned 2023-02-15T07:52:41Z
dc.date.available 2023-02-15T07:52:41Z
dc.date.issued 2023
dc.identifier.citation Ruiz-Giralt A, Biagetti S, Madella M, Lancelotti C. Small-scale farming in drylands: new models for resilient practices of millet and sorghum cultivation. PLoS ONE. 2023 Feb 2;18(2):e0268120. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0268120
dc.identifier.issn 1932-6203
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/55787
dc.description Includes supplementary materials for the online appendix.
dc.description.abstract Finger millet, pearl millet and sorghum are amongst the most important drought-tolerant crops worldwide. They constitute primary staple crops in drylands, where their production is known to date back over 5000 years ago. Compared to other crops, millets and sorghum have received less attention until very recently, and their production has been progressively reduced in the last 50 years. Here, we present new models that focus on the ecological factors driving finger millet, pearl millet and sorghum traditional cultivation, with a global perspective. The interaction between environment and traditional agrosystems was investigated by Redundancy Analysis of published literature and tested against novel ethnographic data. Contrary to earlier beliefs, our models show that the total annual precipitation is not the most determinant factor in shaping millet and sorghum agriculture. Instead, our results point to the importance of other variables such as the duration of the plant growing cycle, soil water-holding capacity or soil nutrient availability. This highlights the potential of finger millet, pearl millet and sorghum traditional cultivation practices as a response to recent increase of aridity levels worldwide. Ultimately, these practices can play a pivotal role for resilience and sustainability of dryland agriculture.
dc.description.sponsorship This research was funded by the European Research Council with a Starting Grant awarded to CL (ERC-Stg 759800). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
dc.language.iso eng
dc.publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
dc.relation.ispartof PLoS ONE. 2023 Feb 2;18(2):e0268120
dc.relation.isreferencedby https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268120.s001
dc.rights © 2023 Ruiz-Giralt et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
dc.rights.uri http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subject.other Agricultura
dc.subject.other Sòl, Ús agrícola del
dc.subject.other Regions àrides
dc.subject.other Mills
dc.subject.other Melca
dc.subject.other Conreus
dc.title Small-scale farming in drylands: new models for resilient practices of millet and sorghum cultivation
dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
dc.identifier.doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268120
dc.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/759800
dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

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