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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)
Scientific Contribution Number
2533
Document Type
Article
Rights
Copyright: © 2014 Smith et al.
Recommended Citation
Smith RG, Atwood LW, Warren ND (2014) Increased Productivity of a Cover Crop Mixture Is Not Associated with Enhanced Agroecosystem Services. PLoS ONE 9(5): e97351. https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0097351
Comments
This is an article published by PLOS in PLOS One in 2014, available online: https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0097351