Designing and Evaluating Complex Cover Crop Mixtures

Project Overview

GS16-162
Project Type: Graduate Student
Funds awarded in 2016: $10,994.00
Projected End Date: 08/31/2018
Grant Recipient: Virginia Tech
Region: Southern
State: Virginia
Graduate Student:
Major Professor:
Dr. Mark Reiter
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Commodities

  • Agronomic: corn, grass (misc. annual), rapeseed, rye, soybeans, vetches

Practices

  • Crop Production: application rate management, catch crops, conservation tillage, cover crops, crop improvement and selection, cropping systems, nutrient cycling
  • Education and Training: extension, networking, participatory research

    Proposal abstract:

    Cover crops are used by farmers to provide a range of ecosystem services including nitrogen scavenging and fixation, weed suppression, reducing soil compaction and increasing water use efficiency that can result in increased crop yield. Success with simple, two-species cover crop mixes has led to interest in more complex cover crop mixtures, with three or more species. But research on complex cover crop mixtures is inconsistent because it fails to capture all of the potential ecosystem services provided by complex mixtures. This research hopes to show the cumulative effect of the ecosystem services provided by cover crop mixes and describe the best cover crop mixture.

    Project objectives from proposal:

    1. Measure ecosystem services provided by monocultures and cover crop mixtures, including corn yield.
      1. Provisioning services of corn yield and cover crop biomass.
      2. Weed suppression.
      3. Reduced soil compaction.
      4. Nitrogen accumulation by cover crops.
      5. Increased soil water conservation to reduce irrigation needs.
    2. Evaluate the range of ecosystem services provided by cover crop mixtures to select cover crop mixtures that provide the desired ecosystem services and the lowest amount of trade-offs.
    3. Estimate the contribution of individual cover crop species or plant functional groups (legumes, small grains, brassicas and tap-roots) toward the desired ecosystem service to design new cover crop mixtures.
    Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or SARE.