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Cover crop mixtures do not assemble markedly distinct soil microbiotas ascompared to monocultures in a multilocation field experiment
Within the cover-crop research and user community, the pros and cons of growing monocultures or mixtures of cover crops are debated. Discussions about this topic are hampered by the scarcity of robust experimental data.
On three field locations in The Netherlands, we checked whether monocultures or mixtures of cover crops (5 or 8 species) had distinct effects on biomass accumulation, or on the soil microbiome (bacteria and fungi). Mixtures gave rise to average biomass accumulation, and nomixture-specificeffects on the soil microbiome were observed.
For a proper understanding: distinct cover crops have very different effects on the soil microbiome, but the use of mixtures had no additional beneficial effects on the soil microbiome.
Figures: Overview of field locations in The Netherlands, and experimental layout
