Winter cover crops affecting physical and chemical soil attributes in a commercial vineyard

Abstract

Cover crops may have direct or indirect effects on the physical and chemicalsoil attributes; these cropsplay a key role in the cycling of nutrients in the soil and add labile organic carbon, bringing economic and environmental benefits to the system. To study the effect of cover crops on the physical and chemical properties of an Oxisol, a three-year experiment was conducted in a commercial vineyard located at Epagri’s Experimental Station in Videira, SC, Brazil. Different winter species (white clover, red clover, common vetch, turnip, corn spurrey, black oat, rye, and ryegrass) were sown in addition to treatments with manual weeding or mechanical mowing. Certain chemical and physical attributes of soil were determined in samples collected fromlayers 0-0.1 and 0.1-0.2m deep on the vinerows and between rows, as well as the dry mass of winter cover crops. Few chemical and physical attributes of the soil changed among winter cover crops and did not differ from the crops managed with mechanical mowing or hand weeding of spontaneous vegetation. Vine rows provided more adequate values of most physical and chemical soil attributes.

Root‐dependent recovery of pore system functionality of compacted subsoil: A field case study with bio‐subsoilers in Denmark

“…and physical changes) in various parts of the world (Culman et al, 2013;Osipitan et al, 2018;Rosolem et al, 2002;Snapp et al, 2005;Veiga et al, 2017;Welch et al, 2016), the potential of cover crop roots to recover soil structure has been the focus of only a few studies. For example, Materechera et al (1992) ) in a compacted sandy loam soil, finding that the root diameter influences on the penetration of roots into the dense subsoil.…”

Winter cover crops effects on soil microbial characteristics in sandy areas of Northern Shaanxi, China

“…Winter cover crops are often sowed after the harvest of cash crops (Daryanto et al, 2018). The aboveground litter (Veiga et al, 2017), underground root exudates, and dead roots (Austin et al, 2017) of winter cover crops are accumulated in the soil, changing nutrient cycling in the topsoil. Winter cover crops can create a favorable environment for soil microorganisms (Balota et al, 2014;de Cima et al, 2016;Nevins et al, 2018) by inputting decomposable organic substrates (Poeplau and Don, 2015;Plaza-Bonilla et al, 2016;Alvarez et al, 2017) to improve soil structure and corrosion resistance (Wang et al, 2015;Zhang et al, 2015;Daryanto et al, 2018).…”

Mealybug preference among clover cultivars: testing potential groundcover plants to dissociate mealybugs from grapevines

“…comm.). White clover is often sown as part of a groundcover mix because of the benefits of N-fixation, weed suppression, moisture retention, improved soil tilth and crop production of vines (Hartwig & Ammon 2002;da Veiga et al 2017). Virus-infected mealybugs on grapevines may rapidly spread the disease to healthy vines.…”