Climate change, soil degradation, and depletion of natural resources are becoming the most prominent challenges for crop productivity and environmental sustainability in modern agriculture. In the scenario of conventional farming system, limited chances are available to cope with these issues. Relay cropping is a method of multiple cropping where one crop is seeded into standing second crop well before harvesting of second crop. Relay cropping may solve a number of conflicts such as inefficient use of available resources, controversies in sowing time, fertilizer application, and soil degradation. Relay cropping is a complex suite of different resource-efficient technologies, which possesses the capability to improve soil quality, to increase net return, to increase land equivalent ratio, and to control the weeds and pest infestation. The current review emphasized relay cropping as a tool for crop diversification and environmental sustainability with special focus on soil. Briefly, benefits, constraints, and opportunities of relay cropping keeping the goals of higher crop productivity and sustainability have also been discussed in this review. The research and knowledge gap in relay cropping was also highlighted in order to guide the further studies in future.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	crop productivity, environmental sustainability, intercropping, resource use efficiency, soil health
Research Division:	Agricultural, Veterinary and Food Sciences
Research Group:	Crop and pasture production
Research Field:	Crop and pasture biomass and bioproducts
Objective Division:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Group:	Expanding knowledge
Objective Field:	Expanding knowledge in the agricultural, food and veterinary sciences
UTAS Author:	Tanveer, M (Mr Mohsin Tanveer)
ID Code:	125308
Year Published:	2017
Web of Science® Times Cited:	25
Deposited By:	Agriculture and Food Systems
Deposited On:	2018-04-12
Last Modified:	2018-08-13
Downloads:	0