Species Mix As Cover Crop To Practice No Tillage In Organic Arable Production

Summary

Cover crop no tillage (CCNT) technique could provide a diversity of benefits on soil quality in organic production system including spring cash crop such as soybean. However, CCNT remains poorly practiced by organic farmers due the challenges to manage weeds and cover crops without neither soil tillage nor herbicide. This paper aims to investigate the effect of a mix of cereal grains as cover crop compared to pure species to reduce weed pressure and the effect on soybean in organic CCNT system. Trials were conducted at four locations in France to compare three cover crops: rye, triticale and mix of rye/triticale. The cover crops are rolled and soybean is directly planting into the mulch. The mix of rye/triticale cover crop conducted to an intermediate weed control between the pure species from the soybean planting to the harvest. The mix of rye/triticale as rolled cover crop provided similar soybean yield than with pure rye (2.5 t.ha-1) which is superior to the soybean yield obtained with triticale cover crop (2.0 t.ha-1).