Two new articles were being published in the international scientific journal Icelandic Agricultural Sciences. A total of 8 articles have been published in issue 30/2017.
The first article, Impact of sheep grazing on the Icelandic ecosystem , is by Bryndís Marteinsdóttir and two other authors. The authors give an overview of research and writing on the effects of sheep grazing on pastures in Iceland and went through 347 articles for that work. Only 44 of them had reliable statistical data to perform a meta-analysis of the effects of grazing on various ecological aspects of pastures, but these articles were based on 16 different studies. The other data reported too simple observations, were retellings from usable data or were more or less the opinions of the authors in question. The conclusion was that for most ecological variables, research was published too little to be able to draw general conclusions from them through a collective analysis. Significant effects were found that on grazing land there was more erosion in the vegetation cover and that grazing had a significant effect on the vegetation communities.
It is certainly noteworthy how many holes are in the theoretical knowledge of the effects of pasture grazing in Iceland with regard to how long there is a tradition of sheep grazing. This clearly requires a great deal of effort in order for the discussion on grazing to take place on a more solid theoretical basis, where facts are based and it is possible to make informed decisions.
In this short article, The effect of soil type on barley harvest in Icelandic cultivation experiments, Hrannar Smári Hilmarsson and co-authors use results from a number of building experiments at the Experimental Station at Korpa by Úlfarsá and show that there is a considerable difference in the harvest of barley crops according to soil type. In some genotypes it did not seem to matter whether it was bog or peat soil, but in others the soil type had quite an effect. It seems that late-ripening varieties give very little yield in peat soil, while early-ripening 6-row barley tends to shed grain in the wind if it is grown on peat soil, but reaches less maturity but also gives more yield on peat soil. On the whole, the grain weight is higher in dry land than in peat soil.
This article is a summary that will be useful to growers when choosing a seed product and shows that the design of the arable land is very important.