The design of a new cropping system experiment to be used as a research platform – maize and winter wheat in monoculture and rotations

According to climate models, the winters in large parts of Sweden will become milder and precipitation will increase. At the same time natural resources can be expected to become more scarce and expensive. To address questions associated with these changing conditions we have started a long-term field experiment that has some special features, such as involvement from many disciplines, four true replicates, all crops each year by considering crops as study crops or break crops (2-year rotation, study crop – break crop) and large plots that allow both monitoring from satellites and strips at each side of the harvest plot for short term experiments. In this paper we present the experiment, with special emphasis on the novelty in the design. We believe that its features will make the experiment a platform for collaboration between researchers within and outside The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)