Cornell Soil Health Assessment (CSHA) and Haney Soil Health Test (HSHT) in a Medium-Term Cover Crop Experiment.

Several indicators, such as Cornell soil health assessment (CSHA) and Haney soil health test (HSHT), have been developed to provide an overall score; however, only CSHA has been evaluated in long-term experiments in Canada. Therefore, in 2015 and 2016, two medium-term (7-yr) cover crop (cc) experiments (no cover control (no-cc), oat, oilseed radish (OSR), cereal rye, and a mixture of OSR+Rye) with 1-yr winter wheat straw management (retained (+S) and removed (-S)) as RCBD with 4 replications were used to assess the suitability of HSHT and CSHA to detect soil health differences. A composite soil sample at 0-15 cm depth (≥20 cores, 3.5 cm diameter) was collected from each split plot at tomato harvest. The HSHT includes water extractable organic carbon and nitrogen (WEOC, WEON)), Solvita® 1 d CO₂ respiration, whereas, the CSHA consists of 17 different soil properties. In 2015, the highest Haney score was observed for OSR+Rye (28.8±2.61%) and no-cc (28.1±2.61%) (P=0.0014); the WEOC (P=0.0015) and WEON (P=0.0014) were highest for OSR+Rye =no-cc≥oat≥OSR≥Rye. The CSHA score was highest for OSR+Rye (70±1.28%) (P=0.0051) which was not different than rye and OSR individually. In 2016, a cc*straw interaction was observed with all the HSHT parameters (P<0.0001); rye+S and OSR+Rye+S had highest values. The CSHA score was highest for oat (74.2 ±2.04%) and rye (78.6 ± 2.04%) (P=0.0020). These results suggest the utility of HSHT and CSHA in detecting soil health differences where cc were planted over the medium-term. No significant correlations between CSHA and HSHT scores, CSHA score and soil organic carbon (SOC), and HSHT score and SOC, were observed in both years. Considering that HSHT and CSHA differentiated among the cc in both years, it is recommended that growers adopt cc for long-term improvement of soil health. This study is the first evaluation of HSHT in Canada.