Aerial Seeding of Winter Cover Crops In the Mid-Atlantic USA.

Winter cover crops have the potential to reduce the impact of agricultural production on the surrounding ecosystem, including the Chesapeake Bay.  Cover crops are one of the main tools that will be relied upon in the coming years to help meet water quality goals and acreage need to expand by over 50,000 ha of cover crop annually to help meet the agreed upon goals.  The objective of this work is to evaluate aerial cover crop seeding techniques on cover crop success and performance.  This allows the cover crop to potentially establish much sooner than if cover crop seeding must wait until after harvest of the cash crop.  Each of the study fields was evaluated for time to seed germination and plant population to determine seeding success.  In early winter percent ground cover was estimated from all plots.  Aboveground biomass was hand clipped from a 0.5 m^-2 area in each comparative demonstration at this time and crop samples dried to determine dry matter yield.  Digital photographs were taken from each treatment for analysis.  Overall, we will develop a greater understanding of the techniques that increase success of aerial seeding in various crop rotations and develop recommendations for this practice.