Abstract
The condition and degree of weed infestation were determined in a spring barely crop grown in a short-term monoculture after mulching the soil with plants grown as a stubble crop (the control treatment without cover crop – lacy phacelia, white mustard, sunflower). The field experiment was carried out in 2010–2013 on good rye soil complex using a split-block design in four replications. The obtained results (the mean from all years of the experiment) showed that the stubble crop, especially sunflower, reduced the diversity of weed species without causing at the same time changes in weed species dominance. In all the control treatments of the experiment, <em>Chenopodium album</em> and <em>Fallopia convolvulus</em> were the dominant species. The degree of spring barley weed infestation depended on the species grown in the cover crop. White mustard and lacy phacelia slightly increased the number of weeds but their fresh matter significantly increased. However, the sunflower cover crop significantly increased the number of weeds without any substantial differentiation of their fresh mass.
Highlights
Due to the prevailing share of cereals in the crop structure (75%) that has been maintained in Poland for many years, cereals are sown after previous grain crops or in a monoculture
After the stubble crops it was slightly lower in the first period of the research (BBCH 55); from 14 species after the lacy phacelia catch crop, 13 species after white mustard, and 12 species after sunflower (Tab. 1, Tab. 2)
The smallest number of dominant species was determined in the control treatment (89.4% of the total number of weeds), whereas after lacy phacelia, white mustard and sunflower it was 94.9%, 93.6%, and 94.4%, respectively
Summary
Due to the prevailing share of cereals in the crop structure (75%) that has been maintained in Poland for many years, cereals are sown after previous grain crops or in a monoculture. The effect of monoculture is a decrease in yield mainly due to the severity of infection caused by diseases and pests [1,2], the accumulation of toxins due to the decay of crop residue [3,4] as well as increased weed infestation [5,6,7,8]. One of the methods of reducing the negative effects of cereals sown after each other is the cultivation of phytosanitary plants such as stubble crops [9,10,11]. Among plants grown as stubble crops, the most useful ones prove to be short vegetation species that sprout and grow quickly, shadow the soil well and provide lots of organic matter which undergoes the decay process. The effect of intercrop plants on weed infestation of cereals is not explicit, more studies indicate a reduction in weed infestation, especially if plants from the Brassicaceae family possessing allelopathic features were grown as a stubble crop [12,13,14,15]
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