Research collaboration to explore the impact of cover crops on soil health and corn production to improve agriculture sustainability

Date:08-16-2024

Christopher Topp, PhD, Member and Principal Investigator of the Danforth Plant Science Center and his lab members Marcus Griffiths, PhD and Kong Wong, PhD, have teamed up with colleagues at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Kaiyu Guan, PhD, Bin Peng, PhD, and Sheng Wang, PhD, to explore the impact of cover crops on soil health and corn production to improve agriculture sustainability. The research findings will be used to develop tools to help farmers make decisions about when, where and what type of cover crops could be beneficial. A $650,000 award grant from the National Institutes for Food and Agriculture will support the research project.

The research team will conduct multi-year field trials of 12 cover crop species that integrate with corn production, and use root phenomics, cutting-edge sensing technologies, and machine-learning enabled agroecosystem modeling to gain an improved understanding of the variation for root traits that exists among diverse cover crop species and their influence on soil and cash crops. 

″The major goal of the project is to fill key gaps in the foundational knowledge base of cover crop plant species that currently hinder their efficacy and farmer adoption,″ said Topp. ″Roots are the interface of the plant with soil, but there is a limited understanding of cover crop root system traits and their empirical effects on soil health and cash crop productivity.″ 

Cover cropping has been largely considered a major conservation approach to improve ecosystem services for sustainable agriculture. With current adoption rates low across US farmlands, extensive investments from government and private sectors have strongly encouraged farmers to employ cover crops. These efforts will be bolstered by an increased understanding of cover crop root system traits and their effect on soil and cash crops, especially across the spectrum of cover crop species diversity that will be needed to maximize benefits in many different environments and cropping systems. 

″What’s unique about this project is that we will combine the unprecedented capability of the Danforth Center’s root phenotyping with our advanced modeling capability at the University of Illinois, aiming to significantly deepen our understanding of cover crop root diversity and their impacts on plant and soil. Our modeling thus can extrapolate the findings and implications to the broader geography across the Midwest to inform better practices of cover crop,″ said Guan, lead principal investigator at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and director of the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center.  

″Creating a better understanding of the impact of cover crops will help farmers be more informed about selecting cover crops that maximizes both yield and ecosystem benefits and thereby supports widespread adoption of cover crop management practices in the US,″ Topp added.