Nutrient Cycling by Cover Crops in Vegetable Growing under Conservation Agriculture | Chapter 07 | Current Research in Agriculture and Horticulture Vol. 1

Nutrient cycling for crop production is desired to reduce environment impact, enhance nutrients use efficiency and reduce cost production.  Several agriculture techniques are available to support this possibility for grower and so give the sustainable production driving for the better nutrient using. Conservation Agriculture is a current system for crop production that provide this possibility and it is based in three agronomic principles that are minimum disturbance of soil or no-tillage for crop establishment, permanent residue on soil surface and crop rotation. In this context, cover crops is use as crop rotation in vegetable production and this possibilities the nutrients cycling, straw production to protect soil surface and improving in soil fertility, among another benefits to agricultural environment. Because your vigorous root growth they achieve nutrients that were being lost by leaching in the soil profile e come back to their shoot recycling nutrients into the system. After, nutrients will be mineralized and so available to the soil solution and crop nutrition. Many horticulturists around the world have been using successfully cover crops as crop rotation to get sustainable in their production and here in this work we approach some results that support rational using of cover crops for recycling nutrients in horticultural crops in the context of Conservation Agriculture. So we certified this efficient function of cover crops to straw production and nutrient recycling in some crop like tomato, broccolis and watermelon to get high yield with reduced environmental impacts and improvement of soil fertility.

Author(s) Details

Dr. Roberto B. F. Branco
Agência Paulista de Tecnologia dos Agronegócios (APTA/IAC), Ribeirão Preto-SP, Brasil.

Dr. Sally F. Blat
Agência Paulista de Tecnologia dos Agronegócios (APTA/IAC), Ribeirão Preto-SP, Brasil.

Tais G. S. Gimenes
Centro Universitário Moura Lacerda, Ribeirão Preto-SP, Brasil.

Dr. Rodrigo H. D. Nowaki
Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP-FCAV), Jaboticabal-SP, Brasil.

Dr. Humberto S. Araújo
Agência Paulista de Tecnologia dos Agronegócios (APTA), Andradina-SP, Brasil.

Dr. Fernando A. Salles
Agência Paulista de Tecnologia dos Agronegócios (APTA/IAC), Ribeirão Preto-SP, Brasil.

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