https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0097351">
 

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Cover crops provide a variety of important agroecological services within cropping systems. Typically these crops are grown as monocultures or simple graminoid-legume bicultures; however, ecological theory and empirical evidence suggest that agroecosystem services could be enhanced by growing cover crops in species-rich mixtures. We examined cover crop productivity, weed suppression, stability, and carryover effects to a subsequent cash crop in an experiment involving a five-species annual cover crop mixture and the component species grown as monocultures in SE New Hampshire, USA in 2011 and 2012. The mean land equivalent ratio (LER) for the mixture exceeded 1.0 in both years, indicating that the mixture over-yielded relative to the monocultures. Despite the apparent over-yielding in the mixture, we observed no enhancement in weed suppression, biomass stability, or productivity of a subsequent oat (Avena sativa L.) cash crop when compared to the best monoculture component crop. These data are some of the first to include application of the LER to an analysis of a cover crop mixture and contribute to the growing literature on the agroecological effects of cover crop diversity in cropping systems.

Publication Date

5-21-2014

Journal Title

PLOS One

Publisher

PLOS

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0097351

Scientific Contribution Number

2533

Document Type

Article

Rights

Copyright: © 2014 Smith et al.

Comments

This is an article published by PLOS in PLOS One in 2014, available online: https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0097351

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