•  
  •  
 

Keywords

cover crop, dryland, forage

Abstract

Replacing fallow with dual-purpose cover crops (CCs) can increase the profitability of dryland crop rotations in the semi-arid Great Plains. Little research information is available on CC mixtures that optimize productivity and profitability in dryland environments. Field experiments were conducted from 2015 to 2017 at the Kansas State University Hearting Beason (HB) Ranch near Brownell, KS, to quantify forage productivity, nutritive value, and profitability of spring-planted single or mixed species CCs in a winter wheat-grain sorghum-fallow (WSF) crop rotation. The CC treatments were implemented in the fallow phase ahead of winter wheat planting. Treatments were five spring-planted CC treatments: (1) spring oat; (2) spring triticale; (3) oat and triticale mixture (OT, two-species mixture); (3) oat, triticale, and pea (OTP, three-species mixture); and (5) oat, triticale, pea, radish, turnips, and buckwheat (cocktail, six-species mixture), and chemical fallow. Results showed that CC forage accumulation was 33% to 35% greater in sole triticale and OT mixture compared with sole spring oat or cocktail treatments. Multispecies mixtures, cocktail, and OTP had significantly greater available energy, digestibility, and dry matter intake based on measured CP, ADF, NDF, and in vitro dry matter digestibility (IVDMD) compared with single CC species (oat or triticale). Net return was directly proportional to CC forage accumulation. Averaged across years, net return was $40/a greater for the OT treatment compared with the multi-species mixtures. Our results suggest that simple CC mixtures with greater forage accumulation (for example, sole triticale and OT mixture) are better dual-purpose CC alternatives for the semi-arid Great Plains.

Download
COinS
 

Rights Statement

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted.
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.