Abstract
Manipulating cover crops as an integrated pest management strategy has recently gained popularity in both traditional and organic agroecosystems. However, little information is available for producers to make informed decisions about cover crop selection, management, and their potential use as a pest management tool. To address this, we conducted a two-year, four-season field experiment on the potential of various cover crops during the summer seasons of both years, followed by monocultures of cash crops during winters. We hypothesized that the cover crop treatments would attract beneficial insects and repel damaging herbivores in a species-specific manner, and the insect community dynamics would be bridged to the cash crops in the subsequent season. In addition, we hypothesized that cash crops would suffer lower herbivory damage following specific cover crop treatments. Our design comprised of three cover crops. Our results indicate that cover crops support beneficial insects during the early summer season, while the time of growing season doesnot affect herbivore abundance. Crop-specific effects were found for herbivore abundance with possible cascading effects on insect community as well as damage levels on the subsequent cash crop, but without any impact on the growth traits of the cash crop. Together, our data suggest that cover crops, when carefully selected, can be an integral part of a pest management strategy for sustainable agriculture.
Highlights
Harnessing natural predator–prey interactions to limit pest populations is one of the major goals of insect biological control, and farmers have employed both augmentative and classical strategies to increase beneficial insects in their cropping systems
For the summer of year 1, when cover crops were planted, we found no significant difference among the three cover crop species and their mix for the total number of insects collected in the traps when pooled for each treatment (P = 0.286; Table 3)
This study was conducted to examine the effect of sorghum sudangrass, cowpea, sunn hemp, and their mix on the insect community dynamics in the field and whether their effects cascaded to the cash crop grown during the following season upon their termination
Summary
Harnessing natural predator–prey interactions to limit pest populations is one of the major goals of insect biological control, and farmers have employed both augmentative and classical strategies to increase beneficial insects in their cropping systems. Increasing plant diversity in cropping systems can play an important role in protecting and managing crops from herbivore damage, by increasing both natural enemy abundance and diversity, which in turn can suppress pest populations [2]. These community ecology-based pest management strategies can be mediated through plant volatiles, and their induction through herbivore damage (herbivore induced plant volatiles; HIPV) as a cue for predators and parasitoids through tritrophic interactions [3], and as a repellant for some herbivore species [4]. The intentional planting of non-cash crops for agroecosystem services such as weed suppression and water management [7], is a common method that has been found to increase above- and Agriculture 2020, 10, 209; doi:10.3390/agriculture10060209 www.mdpi.com/journal/agriculture
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