Hi I'm Michael O'Donnell and I serve as an extension educator for
organic and diversified agriculture with Purdue Extension.
In this role I coordinate an organic agriculture extension program in order
to better serve the educational and
technical resource needs of organic farmers
and other agricultural professionals in the organic industry
here in the state of Indiana. A major focus of this extension program
is related to organic grain production so organic row crops like corn and
soybean and transitioning grain crop acreage
into organic production here in the state of Indiana.
A major research question in the in the area of organic row crop production
is how can we reduce our reliance on tillage and row crop
cultivation in order to improve soil health and reduce the number of
passes that we're making across these fields
throughout the year. So traditionally in organic row crop systems
we rely pretty heavily on tillage and row crop cultivation
first and foremost to manage weeds in these systems but also
the tillage is used to manage cover crops that are important part of organic
crop rotations and to manage crop residues
so where in an organic crop rotation do we have opportunities to implement
no-till. So we're not looking at a continuous
no-till system but a rotational no-till system i'm
standing here in a soybean field because that
presents a great opportunity in order to implement a no-till phase
in an overall organic crop rotation so for for organic no-till production
systems the basic idea is that we're going to
seed a cereal rye cover crop in the late summer early fall of the
year preceding that soybean crop we're going
to seed it at a fairly high seeding rate sometimes up to
150 pounds or three bushels of cereal rye
so that we end up with a very high biomass
cover crop ahead of our soybean crop with cereal rye once it reaches anthesis
or full flower it's able to be terminated mechanically
without the use of herbicides using a roller crimper or other types of
implements that will roll down and impart a
crimping action on the stem of that sierra rye
cover crop that terminates it again without the use
of herbicide that then allows us to no-till our
soybean crop directly into that cereal rye we also
have the ability to no-till that soybean crop earlier into
that standing cereal rye coming back later at anthesis of that
rye cover crop and terminate it
what we found after five years of of experimental plots at the Davis
Purdue Agricultural Center is that this not only has application to
organic systems but also conventional no-till soybean
systems giving us the ability to reduce our
reliance on herbicides possibly reducing
all the way down to a single herbicide post herbicide application in
conventional management systems and if we really focus on getting a
high quality high biomass cry cover crop we could
completely eliminate herbicides in a conventional no-till soybean crop
in a given year so so this system of mechanically
terminated cereal rye cover crop for no-till soybean production
has applications not only in organic management systems
but also conventional management systems. It's June 1st
we're at the Davis Purdue Agricultural Center in Farmland, Indiana
in a field of cereal rye cover crop where we have
replicated randomized plots for looking at mechanically terminating
the rye cover crop in soybean production systems we are running the
roller crimper today you can see 15-foot INJ roller-crimper
with the chevron pattern that imparts a a
crimp along the stem of this rye as it rolls it down
when that rye reaches anthesis that crimping
rolling action allows it to terminate by by crimping along the stem
we disrupt the flow of water and nutrients through this plant
terminating it so we can get upwards 95 plus percent
termination mechanically without the use of herbicide.
So we're looking at this system both for in use in conventional
and certified organic management systems so in this in this research study which
we've had going for several years this year we're looking at three different
treatments one where the soybeans were no-till
planted into plots about two to three weeks ago
into the standing cereal rye cover crop the cover crop was about at boot stage
and then we come back at full anthesis and
terminate the rye with the roller crimper and the beans are at about v1
growth stage so they're safe generally safe with that
roller crimping action so one set of plots we plant it at boot
and then we come back and terminate the rye with the roller crimper
at at anthesis and the soybeans at about v1
a second set of plots we planted when the rye was at boot
but then a day or two later sprayed it with an
herbicide to chemically terminate the rye cover crop at that stage so more
of a conventional management system the third set of plots we are also
crimping today and they will be no-till planted to
soybeans so more of the traditional of crimping and planting on the same day.
We are standing in a plot that has been roller crimp
terminated the cereal rye cover crop has been roller crimped terminated
we'll see how how well this stays down in the coming
coming days coming week. But this is a plot that was already
planted to beans that was no-till planted to beans when the rye
was at boot stage and then we just rolled so I wanted to
see what this looks like.
So here are the beans
after being rolled coming up through this rye
so you can see pretty pliable we don't see any crimping
in this stem but if we go to a tire track
we'll see where some of the soybeans are damaged
so right here this bean right at the base
tire went over it and that stem is crimped
so that beans probably smoked so that begs the question if we waited
until these soybeans were fully in v1 moving
on to v2 would we see less damage in these tire
tracks because we can see where the roller is
running that we're not we're not affecting the beans but where
those tire tracks are where those tire tracks
are we we clearly are impacting the beans so
here's another example we can see.
Pulled a rye plant for us to look at just to show what that crimping action is doing for
us. So this is a full rye stem all the way you know from the
the root that we can see there on the right
and the head on the left and you can see the two points
at which that roller-crimper crimped the stem
those just fell over like that as soon as I lifted this plant up so the
idea is these crimp points that disrupts further flow of water and nutrients from
this through this plant and it should kill it.
We have finished rolling these plots and the thing that is immediately
worth noting
with this rye stand thinner than we would like given that it was seeded
about mid-October there wasn't any fertility put down
ahead of the rye we had the cooler spring not a lot of
growing units in that first part of spring when this
rye was vegetative didn't get a lot of tillering so not the
ideal stand or ideal biomass production in the
end and we've observed over the years that when we don't
hit those higher levels of biomass production good thick stands
rye that's over your head you know six seven foot tall
that it simply doesn't roller crimp terminate
as well as a thick full stand so we can already see if you look across
here
you can see the different directions it was rolled but it is not flattened out
there are crimps along the stems of these plants so we'll see
what happens in the coming days following this roller crimping operation
but right now it doesn't look too encouraging in terms of
how this cover crop the cry cover crop has rolled down
you