TY  - NEWS
A1  - Ruf, Thorsten
A1  - Emmerling, Christoph
T1  - Different life-form strategies of perennial energy crops and related nutrient exports require a differentiating view specifically concerning a sustainable cultivation on marginal land
T2  - GCB Bioenergy
N2  - Perennial energy crops (PECs) are increasingly used as feedstock to produce energy in an environmental friendly way. Compared to traditional conversion strategies like thermal use, sophisticated technologies such as biomethanation defined different re-quirements  of  the  feedstock.  Whereas  the  first  concept  relies  on  dry,  woody  mate-rial,  biomethanation  requires  a  moist  feedstock.  Thus,  over  time,  the  spectrum  of  species  used  as  PECs  has  widened.  Moreover,  harvest  dates  were  adjusted  to  pro-vide  the  feedstock  at  suitable  moisture  contents.  It  is  well  known  that  perennial,  lignocellulose- based energy crops, compared to annual, sugar-  and starch- based ones, offer ecological advantages such as, inter alia, improving biodiversity in landscape, protecting  soil  against  erosion,  and  protecting  groundwater  from  nutrient  inputs.  However,  one  of  the  main  arguments  for  PEC  cultivation  was  their  undemanding  nature concerning external inputs. With respect to the broader spectrum of PEC spe-cies and changed harvest dates, the question arises whether the concept of PECs being low- input energy crops is still valid. This also implies the question of suitable grow-ing conditions and sustainable management. The aims of this opinion paper were to classify different PECs according to their life- form strategy, compare nutrient exports when harvested in different maturation stages, and to discuss the results in the context of  sustainable  PEC  cultivation  on  marginal  land.  This  study  revealed  that  nutrient  exports  with  yield  biomass  of  PECs  harvested  in  green  state  are  in  the  same  range  than  those  of  annual  energy  crops  and  therewith  several  times  higher  than  those  of  PECs harvested in brown state or of woody short rotation coppices. Thus, PECs can-not  universally  be  claimed  as  low-  input  energy  crops.  These  results  also  imply  the  consequences of cultivation of PECs on marginal land. Finally, the question has to be raised whether the term PECs should prospectively be better specified in written and spoken words.
KW  - harvest dates
KW  - utilization pathways
KW  - premature harvest
KW  - nutrient exports
KW  - nutrient demands
KW  - Energiepflanzen
KW  - Ausdauernde Pflanzen
KW  - Ernte
KW  - Nährstoffverlust
Y1  - 2021
UR  - https://ubt.opus.hbz-nrw.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/1789
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:385-1-17892
VL  - 2021
IS  - Band 13
SP  - 893
EP  - 904
PB  - Wiley
CY  - Hoboken
ER  -