Continuous Living Cover in a Corn-Soybean Rotation: Management Approaches and Environmental Benefits

Abstract

Continuous living cover provides ecological, environmental and economic benefits to agricultural systems. Integrating continuous living cover into cropping systems in the Upper Midwest is a strategy to maintain ecosystem services in current corn and soybean rotations. Despite existing knowledge of the compatibility of continuous living cover in corn and soybean rotations, refinement of agronomics of these systems is needed. The purpose of this thesis is to clarify the effects of continuous living cover on corn and soybean systems in the Upper Midwest through refining management techniques for perennial cover crops, determining if seed shatter of winter annual oilseeds in a relay cropping system can provide the option for a re-seeding winter annual double crop; and quantifying impact of relay cropping on water quality through the estimation of N losses in a relay cropping system using crop models.