Intensifying production of grain and fodder in Central Tibet farming systems

• Tibet Agricultural Research Institute, China

Agriculture in the central area of Tibet Autonomous Region is mainly conducted on the floors and lower slopes of river valleys. Soils are fertile and average rainfall, mostly falling between July and October, sufficient to support cropping. Barley, wheat, rapeseed, faba bean, maize, vegetables, potato and fodder crops are all grown. The high altitude of the cropping zone means growing periods are characterised by high sunshine intensity and large divergence between daytime and night time temperatures. These characteristics require specific management practices for cropping. Current levels of grain production are close to achieving self-sufficiency but need to be further improved as importing of grain to so remote a region is costly. This shortfall in production also means that livestock are grazed on open grasslands rather than on more beneficial fodder. Livestock production is also a very important component of agriculture in Tibet Autonomous Region. Animal rearing provides opportunities for additional cash incomes, but growth rates are hampered by grassland grazing being the main form of fattening, rather than feeding using fodder crops. This poor nutrition remains an impediment to increased growth, restricting possible cash returns.

Intensifying overall cropping, both of grain and fodder production will result in improvements through the whole system, bringing cereal self-sufficiency closer and improving animal growth to allow access to income from their sale.

This project is optimising the use of resources in cropping for the production of both food-grain crops and fodder crops in central Tibet through careful matching of crop-types to the agro-climatic environment.

Understand existing knowledge of the agro-climatic environment and farmer practice through data collection of crop growth parameters, to allow crop modelling. Public access models will be used to develop best bet options and to establish experimental guidelines. For these analyses a minimum data set of maximum and minimum temperature, radiation, rainfall (daily data over about 20 years) and plant data of number of plants, planting date, emergence date, flowering date, maturity, biomass, yield, grain weight will be sourced and/or created.
Develop more intensive cropping systems delivering adequate food grain and more fodder through variety selection, timing management, relay agronomy and rotation dynamics. Double cropping options will be examined in South Australia.
The capacity of Tibetan scientists will be greatly enhanced by having them involved throughout the project and all activities. The demonstration of on-farm trials to farmer groups will also substantially boost their capacity.