Abstract
Background and aims
Cover crops are an integral constituent of sustainable subtropical agroecosystems. Using grass/legume mixtures as opposed to monocultures has the potential to maximize their multifunctionality. This project aimed to understand temporal patterns of nitrogen (N) release of cover crop monocultures and mixtures in a subtropical vegetable production system.
Methods
A litterbag experiment was established to study N release patterns of two commonly used grasses, two legumes, four two-species mixture each with one grass and one legume, and one four-species mixture. This field experiment was complemented by two laboratory incubations to quantify soil N mineralization after the termination of cover crops in 2020 and 2021.
Results
The majority of residue N (> 60%) was lost in the first month of decomposition, suggesting no or minimal N release from cover crops beyond one cropping season. Mixtures enhanced N release relative to monocultures within the first two months; however, the timing of this synergistic effect depended on grass species in the mixture. Initial residue N concentration reasonably predicted the N loss trajectory of all residue types (r = -0.72; p < 0.05). Legumes showed the highest N mineralization rate, followed by mixtures and lastly grasses.
Conclusions
Our findings reveal significant temporal variability in N release among different cover crop mixtures, despite the rapid decomposition across all cover crop treatments. Selection of appropriate species in cover crop mixtures helps to facilitate the synchronization of N release and crop update in subtropical systems where N management is extremely time sensitive.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during the current study will be made available to the public at doi:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7448554 upon acceptance of the manuscript.
Abbreviations
- N:
-
Nitrogen
- C:
-
Carbon
- C:N:
-
Carbon to Nitrogen Ratio
- BIC:
-
Bayesian Information Criterion
- ANOVA:
-
Analysis of Variance
- HSD:
-
Honestly Significant Difference
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Acknowledgements
We thank members of both the Soil Health and Sustainable Nutrient Management Laboratories for their help in the laboratory and the field. Interns and volunteers, including Merina Ingram, Victoria Tesch, and Lumas Wistride, assisted with field and laboratory work. Ethan Weinrich, Michael James and John Allar provided training on both the incubation setup and NO3−-N and NH4+-N colorimetry. Dr. William Hammond and Yolanda Lopez provided access to the ball mill, Dr. Jason Curtis enabled the elemental analyses, and Richard Fethiere conducted the fiber analyses. We thank James Longanecker and Dr. Dina Liebowitz from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Field and Fork Program for providing access to the field site and their generous help with site management. Dr. Jose Dubeux served as a mentor and thesis committee member to PN and provided valuable comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. We thank the section editor and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.
Funding
This project was supported by a University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Early Career Seed Grant to GML, a Volo Foundation Vista Award to PN and YL, and U.S. Department of Agriculture Hatch grants FLA-SWS-005733 to GML and FLA-SWS-006103 to YL.
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GML designed the field cover crop trial and the laboratory N mineralization experiment. All authors contributed to the design of litter bag experiment. PN conducted the field and laboratory work and analyzed data with the support from GML and YL. PN wrote the first version of the manuscript, and all authors contributed to revision.
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Supplementary information contains crop rotation details at Field and Fork (Table S1), results from Tukey HSD tests on cumulative inorganic N loss from the incubation experiments (Table S2), Bayesian information criterion (BIC) comparison between the Weibull and a single-pool exponential models (Table S3), mean biomass cover crops yields in both 2021 and 2020 (Figs. S1 and S2, respectively), and N loss patterns from each treatment (Fig. S3).
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Nyabami, P., Maltais-Landry, G. & Lin, Y. Nitrogen release dynamics of cover crop mixtures in a subtropical agroecosystem were rapid and species-specific. Plant Soil 492, 399–412 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-023-06183-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-023-06183-4