1. Alfalfa Contributes More Nitrogen to Following Crop Than Previously Thought

Alfalfa in high-yielding environments fixes significant amounts of atmospheric N2, a portion of which benefits succeeding non-legume crops and reduces fertilizer N requirement by an amount sometimes called the “legume N credit”. Field research-based estimates of the legume N credit in California and other irrigated, semi-arid or arid environments are sparse in the literature. We conducted replicated plot experiments at three field station sites in California using wheat as an indicator... S. Pettygrove, E. Lin, D. Putnam, M. Lundy, S. Orloff, S. Wright