Factors influencing the composition of the weed flora of arable lands from Central Romania

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Weed species loss due to intensive agricultural landuse has raised the need to understand how traditional cropland management has sustained a diverse weed flora. We evaluated to what extent cultivation practices and environmental conditions affect the weed species composition of a small-scale farmland mosaic in Central Transylvania (Romania). We recorded the abundance of weed species and 28 environmental, management and site context variables in 299 fields of maize, cereal and stubble. Using redundancy analysis, we revealed 22 variables with significant net effects, which explained 19.2% of the total variation in species composition. Cropland type had the most pronounced effect on weed composition with a clear distinction between cereal crops, cereal stubble and maize crops. Beyond these differences, the environmental context of croplands was a major driver of weed composition, with significant effects of geographic position, altitude, soil parameters (soil pH, texture, salt and humus content CaCO3, P2O5, K2O, Na and Mg), as well as plot location (edge vs. core position) and surrounding habitat types (arable field , road margin, meadow, fallow, ditch). Performing a variation partitioning for the cropland types one ba one, the environmental variables explained most of the variance compared with within crop management. In contrast, when all sites were combined across different cropland types, the crop-specific factors were more important in explaining variance in weed community composition.

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Weed flora, factors influencing, weed flora of arable lands, Central Romania
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