Escola Superior de Agricultura launches new edition of the Practical Guide to Cover Plants

The topic of cover crops is gaining increasing attention, both in academia and in the field. Seen as an opportunity to offer various ecosystem services, such as soil structuring and protection of the soil surface, they directly impact the producer's economy by reducing the loss of crop productivity, explains Felipe Berto, researcher at Fundação MT, in the preface to the new edition revised and expanded Practical Guide to Cover Plants: Species, management and impact on soil health. The work is available for free download on the USP Open Books Portal.

The book contains detailed information on 63 species (12 more than the previous edition, including eight mixtures of species) cultivated in various regions of Brazil, in addition to including chapters that address the practical aspects of the benefits and challenges in adopting the plants of coverage, as well as management aspects and how to position and choose cover plants to compose mixes. “It is a technical-scientific work that contributes to the challenging mission of making our agriculture even more sustainable”, defines professor Carlos Eduardo P. Cerri, from the Department of Soil Science at Esalq and coordinator of the Center for Carbon Studies in Agriculture Tropical (CCarbon) from USP, at the book presentation.

Developed by the Soil Health & Management Research Group – Sohma) at the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (Esalq) at USP, in Piracicaba, organized by the professor Maurício Roberto Cherubin (in the photo), this guide is indispensable for producers, technicians, researchers and students who want to explore the benefits of cover crops in improving soil health, crop diversification and promoting more sustainable Brazilian agriculture. It is also an important tool for making safe decisions about the use of different cover crops. 

“The assertive selection of cover crops is essential to assist in the continuous improvement of agricultural production systems, making them even more profitable, resilient and sustainable, especially with regard to adaptations and mitigations of agriculture and livestock in the face of global climate change. ”, highlights professor Cerri, adding that, within this context, the guide is directly aligned with the purposes of CCarbon, whose mission is to develop innovative solutions and strategies in sustainable, carbon-based tropical agriculture, to mitigate climate change and improve living standards and conditions. 

The challenges 

There are major challenges in facilitating producers' acceptance of the use of cover crops, as there are many doubts about this topic. Among them: What are the benefits vs. harms for the production system? Which cover plant and which population for each reality? And when using a mix and/or consortium, these doubts intensify, hence the need for practical and applied information, as highlighted by Felipe Berto. 

Furthermore, there is the financial issue. According to the researcher, depending on the price of commodities and the cost of production, associated with climate instability, producers have carefully mapped the risk of investing in commercial crops. “When the risk is high, cover crops have been chosen to avoid leaving areas fallow during the off-season. Finally, the production of cover crop seeds is gaining prominence as a way of diversifying farm income,” he says. 

the species

Among the 63 species present in the guide, there is forage peanut, used in pastures due to the high production of biomass of nutritional quality, as it is an excellent cover crop in intercropped systems, contributing to the reduction of pests and weeds, in addition to improving soil fertility; and andopogon, also known by the popular name of skunk grass, widely used in the formation of pastures and in the recovery of degraded areas due to its resistance to fires, capacity for rapid regrowth in periods of drought and good acceptance by cattle, sheep, goats and equines. 

Or even the calopogonium, or sago bean, which stands out for its biological nitrogen fixation, improvement of soil fertility, control of weeds due to high biomass, improvement of soil structure and prevention of erosion; and crambe, which can be used as a cover plant due to its rusticity, tolerance to low temperatures and resistance to drought, being used in the production of industrial oil – its deep roots decompress the soil, improving its structure and porosity, especially in systems direct planting, in addition to contributing to the suppression of pests through rapid soil coverage, which inhibits the growth of weeds and some pathogens, and attracting pollinators.