In this edition:

• Soil health and conservation
• In-season temporal variability of soil carbon and nitrogen pools after half a century of a tillage and crop rotation gradient.
• Soil organic matter: The heart of soil health.
• Cover Crops and Sustainable Agriculture.
• Soil health and disturbance-based classification of farming systems.
• Chapter 11. Cover Crop Mixes for Diversity, Carbon and Conservation Agriculture.
• Soil Organic Carbon Sequestration and Distribution, Soil Biological Characteristics, and Winter Wheat Yields Under Different Tillage Practices in Long-Term Field Experiment.

In this edition:

• Integrated soil health management influences soil properties: Insights from a U.S. Midwest study.
• Furrow Irrigated Long-Term No-Till and Conventional-Till Soil Evaluation in the Mid-South USA.
• Cross-Effect Between Cover Crops and Glyphosate-Based Herbicide Application on Microbiote Communities in Field Crops Soils.
• Responses of soil reactive nitrogen losses and nitrogen pools to straw mulching.

While later cover crop termination in the spring can allow for more biomass accumulation, such later termination can change the C-to-N composition of the plants impacting residue decomposition. Therefore, identifying the best time for cover crop termination to provide optimal N cycling benefits can help farmers make decisions about cover crop management.

Lessons learned from field scale cover crop trials have transitioned to a watershed scale and continue to show the system’s benefits in controlling nitrogen loss. Shalamar Armstrong, Purdue University assistant professor of soil conservation and management in the Department of Agronomy, is a co-investigator with Illinois State University faculty in the Lake Bloomington watershed trials. Read more in this article from AgriNews.

Only a fraction of conventional row crop farmers grow cover crops after harvest, but a new global analysis from the University of Illinois shows the practice can boost soil microbial abundance by 27%. The result adds to cover crops’ reputation for nitrogen loss reduction, weed suppression, erosion control, and more.