Alternative integrated weed control with cowpea to improve soil properties

Abstract

Cover crop (CC) is a ground cover plant. This is one of the strategies to improve soil quality and suppress the use of herbicides. One of the CC is able to survive in a tropical climate and grows well in soil conditions with moderate to low fertility is cowpea. Therefore, this study attempts to examine the benefits of using cowpea as CC to improve soil quality. This research will be conducted with the experimental method. Moreover, this study used a randomized block design with 2 factorials. The first factor was weed control techniques (P), with levels: without weed control (P0), cover crop (P1), pre-emergence herbicides (P2), post-emergence herbicides (P3), and weed-free (by weeding) (P4). And the second factor is tillage technique (T), namely: without tillage (T0) and conventional tillage (T1). Based on the research conducted, it was found that the combination of using CC (P1) and no tillage (T0) treatments were able to improve soil quality, (P1) affects the nitrogen value of the soil due to the presence of root nodules. While the tillage technique (T0) affects the bulk density (BD) which tends to be stable, and the organic-C content is quite restrained due to no evaporation due to tillage.