Drivers of arable flora diversity in productive Mediterranean pulse cropping systems

Abstract To address major environmental challenges, meat-focused agri-food systems should shift to more sustainable plant-based alternatives, mainly centered around food legumes. However, not enough is known about the impact of pulse cultivation on nonmarket services, such as biodiversity conservation. Especially knowledge of the exact effect of management on endangered arable flora is limited. Understanding nonmarket services is essential for communicating the benefits of pulses to consumers, for adapting management practices, and for calculating potential remuneration. This study investigates how management practices, environmental (soil and weather), and landscape contextual factors influence biodiversity and provisioning services in pulse fields, and how these two services interact. Vegetation data from lentil and chickpea experimental plots and organic fields in the Mediterranean region were mapped and analyzed using primary data meta-analysis and ordination methods. We found that management practices are critical for biodiversity conservation in pulse systems. Omitting weed control increases arable flora species richness but not necessarily the Shannon index and monocropping outperforms intercropping in terms of arable flora diversity. Biodiversity in organic fields was significantly higher in field edges than in centers, highlighting the need for zone-specific management. Furthermore, landscape diversity and field size emerged as important drivers of biodiversity, particularly in the edges, where they explained over 20% of the variance. No negative relationship was found between arable flora diversity and grain yield, and biodiversity positively correlated with crop cover, showing that pulse cultivation can support both biodiversity conservation and production in organic systems.