Evaluation of monocropped and intercropped grain legumes for cover cropping in no-tillage and reduced tillage organic agriculture

reduced tillage (shallow soil inversion + seedbed preparation with rotary harrow); no-tillage (direct seeding)

The objective of this study was to evaluate five large seeded legumes, both monocropped (MC) and intercropped (IC) with sunflowers as late season cover crops, all sown without tillage (no-till seeding) and after shallow soil inversion (reduced tillage). As cover crops: the legumes faba bean (cv. Scirocco), field pea (cv. Livioletta – normal leaf type), narrow-leafed lupin (cv. Azuro), grass pea (cv. Merkur) and common vetch (cv. Mery). The design of the field trial was a completely randomized split plot with four replications. The main plot factors were no-till and reduced tillage. Each main plot was divided into twelve sub plots (22.5 m2, 1.5 m wide and 15 m long), five plots had MC legumes, five plots had IC legumes with sunflowers, one plot had MC sunflowers as the reference crop for the calculation of the N2 fixation, and one fallow plot was without any cover crop.

Intercropping faba bean/field pea/lupin/common vetch/grass pea and sunflower as cover crops