Grant ID Number: ONE09-097
Grant Recipient: Tianna Dupont, Penn State Extension in Northampton County, Nazareth, PA
No-till systems tend to rely on herbicides to kill off cover crops before planting, but herbicide use represents 60 percent of agricultural pesticide use and are not available to organic farmers. An alternative practice of rolling cover crops into a mulch in a no-till system has been researched but not widely adopted, and the project manager will test the practice in a production setting with pumpkins and soybeans to monitor weed suppression and yield with the goal of learning which techniques and cover crop varieties are suitable for the Northeast.
