The Feasibility of Winter Hardy Legumes in the North Central Region

Commodities

Practices

In the North Central region (NCR), cover cropping is one of the
most effective in-field methods to simultaneously reduce soil
erosion, nutrient loss via subsurface drainage, and increase soil
health through carbon sequestration. However, cover crop adoption
is limited to less than 10% of row crop acres due to nutrient
availability, plant disease and other yield lag barriers
experienced with the inclusion of cereal rye before corn, which
widens the financial risk of adoption. One potential solution is
the inclusion of winter hardy legumes that have been selected to
survive the winter of the NCR fallow period. Results of a recent
NCSARE grant (LNC20-432) performed by the Armstrong Lab suggested
that Balansa Clover (Trifolium michelianum Savi) has the
potential to absorb its adoption cost and risk of yield reduction
through generating a sizable N credit that reduces the optimum N
fertilizer rate by 50-100 lbs/A at equal yields relative to the
non-cover crop control and cereal rye treatments (Figure 1).
Unfortunately, these favorable results were only
experienced in Southern IN and IL and establishment of the clover
did not occur in the central and northern portions of the NC
region. Further, the experiments were limited to Balansa Clover,
one of many new varieties. Thus, we are proposing to
investigate the feasibility of multiple winter hardy clover
varieties as covers across the NC region using planting date and
cropping systems as critical treatment variables.
Currently, there is a lack of research that investigates feasible
planting dates for the inclusion of winter hardy legumes within a
corn and soybean cropping system across the hardiness zones of
the NCR. Further, there is a dearth of data that demonstrate the
potential of small grain cropping rotations that allow for an
early fall planting date (Early August), which could advance the
growth potential of winter hardy legumes in the central to
northern portion of the NCR. A healthy stand of winter hardy
legumes in the NCR could allow for greater carbon and nitrogen
capture, reductions in nitrogen applied in corn production, and a
greater number of low carbon intensity cropping systems in the
NCR.   This study has potential to increase cover crop
adoption by equipping NCR farmers with data and advanced
management that maintain cash crop yield, absorb adoption cost,
while reducing nutrient inputs and environmental losses. Our
educational approach will focus on conducting on-farm research,
field days, online data visualization platforms, and scientific
meetings.

Objective: To quantify the feasibility of
multiple overwintering legume clover species across the NCR to
generate N credits that influence synthetic N fertilization
rates, corn yield, farmer economics and N fate.

Learning outcomes: The research project will
generate knowledge and data on the performance range of
overwintering clovers in multiple cropping systems across the
hardiness zones of the NC region. The knowledge gained and
research findings will be stored and shared in a public database
and interactive web interface that allows self-exploration of
experimental results by farmers and trainers and form an
overwintering clover informational hub in the NCR.