title: Relay cropping as a sustainable approach: problems and opportunities for sustainable crop production.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: School of Land and Food, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia. mohsin.tanveer@utas.edu.au.|Department of Agronomy, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Faisalabad, Pakistan. mohsin.tanveer@utas.edu.au.
authors.forename: Mohsin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tanveer
authors.affiliation: Department of Agronomy, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Faisalabad, Pakistan.
authors.forename: Shakeel Ahmad
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Anjum
authors.affiliation: Department of Agronomy, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Faisalabad, Pakistan.
authors.forename: Saddam
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hussain
authors.affiliation: Soil Erosion and Degradation Research Group, University of València, València, Spain.|Soil Physics and Land Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Artemi
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cerdà
authors.affiliation: Department of Crop Science and Technology, College of Agriculture, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Umair
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Ashraf
mesh_terms: D057231:Climate Change; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods*; D000069599:Crop Production / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods*; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000254:growth & development*; D005308:Fertilizers; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010571:Pest Control; D040841:Resource Allocation; D012987:Soil / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D005308:Fertilizers; D012987:Soil
keywords: Crop productivity; Environmental sustainability; Intercropping; Resource use efficiency; Soil health