Barley–hairy vetch mixture as cover crop for green manuring and the mitigation of N leaching risk

Abstract

Adopting mixtures of legumes and non-legumes can be an efficient tool to merge the advantages of the single species in the fall-sown cover crop practice. Cover crop mixtures are supposed to provide an additional benefit in reducing N leaching risks as compared to pure legume thanks to the N trapping skill of the non-legume companion, but to our knowledge no data are available on the effect of mixed cover crops on N leaching. For this reason, in a three-year study we investigated the effect of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) and hairy vetch (Vicia villosa Roth.) grown in 100% pure stands or in 50:50 mixtures on the N leaching below the rooting zone as compared to the bare soil. The NO3-N concentration in the soil solution was monitored by suction cup lysimeters placed at 0.9m depth during the whole growing cycle and after cover crop incorporation into the soil and the amount of leached N was calculated on the basis of estimated drainage.The mixture showed variable biomass accumulation and proportion in the biomass accumulated by companion species across years, but a rather constant N accumulation, with a biomass C/N ratio intermediate between those of the pure crops. In all years, the N trapping effect of the mixture was clear as it decreased NO3-N leaching at the same level of pure barley, both during its own growing cycle and after cover crop incorporation into the soil. Pure vetch showed the highest N source potential as green manure but no NO3-N leaching mitigation effect as compared to the bare soil. Thus we demonstrate here that a mixture of barley and vetch, which was already known to be a “self-buffered system” able to guarantee a good and rather stable N accumulation, is also a “buffering system” for the agroecosystems in the Mediterranean conditions by acting as a N trapping crop able to reduce N leaching.