Prospective for Breeding Cover Crop Cultivars.

Cover crops are planted between periods of regular crops with the objectives of managing soil erosion, improving soil fertility and quality, suppressing weeds, and controlling diseases and pests. Cover crops, also known as ‘living mulches', are usually mowed and then tilled into the soil. Small grains, especially rye, are commonly used as cover crops throughout the southern USA. The use of cover crop mixtures as opposed to a single crop has several advantages including symbiotic nitrogen fixation by a legume species, increasing the likelihood of groundcover establishment, generating a community of complementary root architectures to enhance nutrient mobilization, breaking up pest and disease cycles, contributing to a diverse microbial community and reducing soil erosion.  Recent breeding efforts at the Noble Foundation, Ardmore, OK, have produced several small grains releases (rye, wheat, oat and triticale) focused on forage use with traits of interest that include improved forage quality, greater fall yield, grazing recovery, and greater seasonal yields. Preliminary results from a cover crops evaluation experiment at Gainesville, FL with wheat, triticale, rye, red clover, white clover, and vetch, indicated that rye is the best option follow by vetch. Rye cultivars are relatively easy to establish, provide greater biomass production, and possess allelopathic properties, which make it an ideal cover crop. However, breeding of improved cultivars specifically for use as a cover crop has not been well examined. Considering the recent emphasis on cover crops, it is important to initiate and expand the breeding program to develop novel small grain cultivars for specific use as cover crops that provide adequate seed yield for commercialization, possess greater root mass, greater above ground biomass, as well as, can also be easily managed to ensure the success of the next crop in rotation.