With the rise of herbicide-resistant weeds in most grain and vegetable crops, farmers are looking for alternatives to herbicides to control weeds. Cover crops offer one potential weed management tool. Their use in specialty crops is limited, and no testing has been done so far in edamame. However, a new University of Illinois study reports that early-killed cereal rye shows promise for edamame growers.
With the rise of herbicide-resistant weeds in most grain and vegetable crops, farmers are looking for alternatives to herbicides to control weeds. Cover crops offer one potential weed management tool. Their use in specialty crops is limited, and no testing has been done so far in edamame. However, a new University of Illinois study reports that early-killed cereal rye shows promise for edamame growers.
“Early-killed rye reduced weed density by 20 percent and suppressed early-season weed growth 85 percent,” says Marty Williams, an ecologist with the Department of Crop Sciences at U of I and the USDA Agricultural Research Service.
Edamame is notoriously hard to get started. The soybean variety’s large seeds make them good for eating – edamame seeds are consumed at an immature stage, when they’re firm and green – but the crop can suffer from low seedling emergence in the field. Williams wasn’t sure that asking them to struggle through a layer of cover crop residue would work.
“The question was: Can we find a cover crop management system that provides some amount of weed suppression without causing a problem for the crop? Edamame is far more sensitive to soil conditions during emergence than grain-type soybean,” he says.
Read more at University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
Image: Early-killed cereal rye suppressed weeds and allowed emergence in edamame. (Credit: Marty Williams, University of Illinois)
