Abstract
The termination of cover crops in conventional no-till systems is mostly conducted mechanically in combination with herbicides. Combining flaming and roller crimpers could be a viable solution to avoid using herbicides for cover crop termination in farming systems where herbicides are banned, or at least to reduce their use in an integrated management approach. This research tested the effects of flaming used in combination with three different types of roller crimpers to terminate a fall-sown cover crop mixture of winter pea and barley. The cover crop termination rate was visually assessed in terms of percentage of green cover provided by cover crop plants at different intervals from the termination date, and estimated using a log-logistic non-linear regression model with four parameters. Machine performance data are also reported. The results show that, irrespective of the roller type, flaming significantly boosted the effect of the roller crimpers. In fact, an economic threshold for cover crop suppression of 85% was reached only when the rollers were used in combination with flaming. Nevertheless, none of the methods were able to reach the 100% of cover crop suppression. In some case, the combined use of flaming and roller crimpers allowed reaching the 90% of cover crop devitalisation, which happened six weeks after the termination date. More importantly, the use of flaming in combination with rollers shortened the time needed to achieve the estimated levels of devitalisation, compared with the rollers used alone. We conclude that flaming is an effective tool to increase the effectiveness of roller crimpers. Nevertheless, further research is needed to identify solutions to overcome the barrier of the high operational costs of flaming, which is constraining its wider adoption by farmers. Future studies could focus, for instance, on the development of a new prototype of combined machine for crimping and flaming the cover crops simultaneously, which could potentially reduce the operational costs.
Highlights
In organic or integrated low-input systems where the use of herbicides is banned or reduced, respectively, flaming could be a valid alternative to improve the effect of rollers and/or speed up the cover crop termination
The soil had been fertilized before tillage with 75 kg ha-1 of P2O5 as G27 (Panfertil Spa, Ravenna, Italy) and 75 kg ha-1 of K2O as potassium sulphate (Pastorelli Spa, Pavia, Italy). This was intended as an anticipated P-K fertilization of the cash crop, since these nutrients should better be incorporated into the soil while this would have been hampered in case of cover crop termination by roller crimping and in view of a no-till seeding of the following cash crop
The use of roller crimpers in combination with flaming for terminating cover crops improved the effect of the roller crimpers used alone, and more importantly, shortened the time needed to achieve cover crop desiccation compared with rollers used alone
Summary
Cover crops are used in conservation systems to protect the soil from erosion, enhance water infiltration and storage, reduce nutrient losses through surface run-off or leaching, supply. In organic or integrated low-input systems where the use of herbicides is banned or reduced, respectively, flaming could be a valid alternative to improve the effect of rollers and/or speed up the cover crop termination. Flaming makes it possible devitalizing cover crop plants without tilling the soil through the use of direct heat in the form of fire. This research tests the effect of flaming used in combination with three different types of roller crimpers in order to terminate a winter grown cover crop mixture
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