Effect of species identity and diversity on biomass production and its stability in cover crop mixtures

摘要

Thanks to positive interactions between species, growing mixtures of cover crops allows improving the ecosystem services provided by cover crop cultivation. In this study, the influence of species diversity but also of species identity and mixture composition on cover crop biomass production and its stability in diverse growing conditions was studied. Several field experiments (varying soil type, preceding crop, soil tillage, sowing density, nitrogen fertilization and spatial replication) were set up in Switzerland during the period 2013-2016. In these experiments, the performance of cover crop species grown as sole crops was compared to that of multispecific mixtures. Part of these experiments followed a simplex design in which four cover crop species were combined together with different proportions, producing a total of 25 mixtures of varied diversity. The other experiments compared sole crop and mixture biomass production in standard randomised block or split plot experiments.