Increasing production efficiency and coping with climate change, while ensuring sustainability and resilience

The 3rd group of experiments (GE3) was designed to assess the effect of legume crops cultivated during autumn (from August to January) as cash crops or as green manure on the next tomato crop cultivated during spring (from February to July). Thus, GE3 included two experimental crops, one with legumes starting in August 2018 and terminated in January 2019 (GE3E1) and one with tomato, which started in February 2019 and terminated in July 2019 (GE3E2). In the experiment with legumes tested as preceding crops to tomato (GE3E1), four different treatments were established. In particular, treatment 1 (T1) was a cowpea crop cultivated as a cash crop aiming to produce cowpea pods during autumn 2018. Similarly, treatment 2 (T2) was a common bean crop cultivated as a cash crop aiming to produce commercially marketable common bean pods during autumn 2018. Treatment 3 (T3) was a faba bean crop aiming to be incorporated to the soil at anthesis as green manure. Finally, Treatment 4 (T4) was a faba bean crop aiming to be incorporated to the soil at anthesis as green manure