The Value and Dangers of Short-Term Cover Cropping Research.

Cover crops are considered a ‘best management practice’ in vegetable production systems because they can improve soil quality, reduce soil erosion and nutrient loss, and add diversity to a rotation to better manage pests and diseases.   Cover cropping research has increased over the past two decades due to the increased focus on sustainability.  Will this increased focus on cover crop research translate into more sustainable production systems?  The answer will depend on the how robust the research results are and how well they communicated to farmers and adopted.  Cover crop field trials that occur in realistic settings over an adequate number of years are most likely to produce robust results that are worthy of adoption.  However, a review of peer-reviewed articles in the Web of Knowledge database from 1991 to 2011 indicated that most cover crop field studies are relatively short-term (i.e. 2-years).  Using studies with cover crops conducted over the past 10 years in the central coast region of California, this presentation will (1) provide examples of how short-term studies can provide useful information to generate hypotheses about long-term effects of cover crops, and (2) illustrate that short-term studies may not provide reliable long-term information that growers need.   This data presented will focus on cover crop biomass production, weed management, and yield effects on subsequent cash crops.  The reasons short-term cover crop studies are more common, and potential solutions to encourage more long-term research will be discussed. The prevalence of short-term cover cropping research is particularly relevant to ASA and SSSA because their peer-reviewed publications dominate the world’s cover cropping research.