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.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.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.doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268120
• dc.identifier.issn 1932-6203
• dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/55787
• 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.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/759800
• 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.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
• 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.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion