See more from this Session: Organic Management Systems
Community: I Tuesday, October 18, 2011: 2:05 PM Henry Gonzalez
Convention Center, Room 207B, Concourse Level Crop performance
benefits result when conservation-tillage practices are
incorporated into conventional farming systems. Our objective
was to determine if similar benefits resulted when an Organic
Zero-till (OZ) system was adopted for the production of grain
and seed crops. Buckwheat, corn, and pinto bean were grown
following hairy vetch, winter rye, winter wheat, and cereal-
legume cover crop combinations that were killed using a roller
blade in an OZ system, a tandem disk in a clean-till system, and
a wide sweep in a reduced-till system during a 3-yr period in
southwestern North Dakota, USA. Cereal cover crops produced more
above-ground dry matter than hairy vetch cover crop (P < 0.05),
and weeds were suppressed by the rolled cereal, cover crop mulch
in OZ plots. However, the need to delay rolling cover crops
until advanced growth stages so killin