Relay-Sowing Soybean Into Established Winter Annual Cover Crops
Abstract
Cover crop acreage continues to increase as soil, grazing, and ecosystem benefits become better known. The profit aspect of sustainability could be improved by producing intersown cover crops with an added commodity value. Objectives of this research were to determine if field pennycress, winter camelina, and winter rye could act as effective, feasible, intersown cover crops in soybean-soybean-corn, and, corn-soybean-corn crop sequences. Three sowing dates of each crop were established the previous fall, and soybean, relay-sown the following spring at Prosper and Casselton, ND. Experimental design was a 10 treatment, four replicate, randomized complete block with a 3×3 factorial arrangement, and one non-treated check (NTC) within each replicate. In both crop sequences, treatments containing field pennycress and winter camelina had either similar, or reduced soybean seed yield in relation to the (NTC). Additional yield obtained from field pennycress and/or winter camelina seed did not render this cropping system economically feasible.