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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Cover cropping has been advocated as a mean of reducing soil erosion and increasing soil organic matter and functional
biodiversity. There are many other good reasons to establish a cover crop in an orchard since it can improve in several ways
the physical, chemical and biological properties of a soil. However, herbaceous vegetation competes for resources. In intensivemanaged
orchards, without limitation of available water and nutrients, probably this is a minor problem. In rainfed orchards,
to balance the potential beneficial effects of cover crops and their strong competition for resources in particular for available
water is a great challenge. In this work, we report results from field trials from which we are proposing a model of intervention
in rainfed managed orchards consisting of the use of very early maturing self-reseeding annual legumes as a cover crop. These
plants are able to enrich the soil with nitrogen and to protect the soil all year round through a green cover of vegetation during
autumn-spring and a mulch of dead material during summer. Experimental results also showed that nitrogen nutritional status
of the olive trees and olive yields increased in comparison to a plot of natural vegetation fertilized with 60 kg N ha-1 yr-1.
Description
Keywords
Cover cropping
Citation
Rodrigues, M.A.; Arrobas, Margarida (2017). Cover cropping in rainfed olive orchards. In Annual Congress on Soil Sciences. Madrid