Abstract
Adoption of conservation tillage practices has been slow in organic vegetable production, partially due to producers’ concerns regarding weed management. Integrating cover crops into a conservation tillage program may provide organic producers a viable weed management option enabling growers to practice conservation tillage. A four-year study was conducted to evaluate the influence of different tillage methods (two conventional and two conservation practices) jointly with a mixed winter cover crop for weed suppression, time required for hand weeding, and crop yield in organically managed eggplant (2012 and 2014) and sweet corn (2013 and 2015) production systems. Tillage treatments were conventional tillage without surface mulch (CT-BG) and with black polyethylene (plastic) mulch (CT-BP), strip-tillage (ST), and no-tillage (NT) with cover crop residue. At 2 and 7 WAT/P (weeks after transplanting/planting), intra-row weed density was higher in CT-BG and ST, and inter-row weed density was higher in CT-BG and CT-BP treatments. Time required for hand-weeding was greatest in CT-BG and least in CT-BP and NT treatments. Eggplant yield was lowest in NT treatment in 2012 but similar among treatments in 2014. Sweet corn yield was similar among treatments in 2013 but highest in ST in 2015. Though both CT-BP and NT treatments showed greater potential for weed suppression, production input was highest in CT-BP but least in NT. Implications of these findings suggest that there is a potential to use strip tillage integrating with stale seedbed tactic for weed management in organic vegetables, which reduces herbicide use, hand-labor, and overall weed management cost while maintaining high yield potential.
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Claims 8
Claim · model-written summary
CT-BG and ST had higher intra-row weed density at 2 and 7 WAT/P.
- Taxon
- eggplant
Solanum melongenat0 - Treatment
- CT-BG and STe0
- Outcome
- intra-row weed densitye0
- Direction
- highere0
- Qualifier
- At 2 and 7 WAT/Pe0
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“At 2 and 7 WAT/P (weeks after transplanting/planting), intra-row weed density was higher in CT-BG and ST”
t0“eggplant (2012 and 2014) and sweet corn (2013 and 2015)”
Claim · model-written summary
CT-BG and CT-BP had higher inter-row weed density.
Not reportedComparator
Verbatim
e0“inter-row weed density was higher in CT-BG and CT-BP treatments”
t0“eggplant (2012 and 2014) and sweet corn (2013 and 2015)”
Claim · model-written summary
Hand-weeding time was greatest under CT-BG and least under CT-BP and NT.
- Taxon
- eggplantSolanum melongenat0
- Treatment
- CT-BGe0
- Outcome
- Time required for hand-weedinge0
- Direction
- greateste0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Time required for hand-weeding was greatest in CT-BG and least in CT-BP and NT treatments”
t0“eggplant (2012 and 2014) and sweet corn (2013 and 2015)”
Claim · model-written summary
Eggplant yield was lowest under NT in 2012.
- Taxon
- EggplantSolanum melongenae0
- Treatment
- NT treatmente0
- Outcome
- yielde0
- Direction
- loweste0
- Qualifier
- 2012e0
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Eggplant yield was lowest in NT treatment in 2012”
Claim · model-written summary
Eggplant yield was similar across treatments in 2014.
- Taxon
- EggplantSolanum melongenae1
- Outcome
- yielde1
- Direction
- similare0
- Qualifier
- 2014e0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“similar among treatments in 2014”
e1“Eggplant yield was lowest in NT treatment in 2012 but similar among treatments in 2014”
Claim · model-written summary
Sweet corn yield was similar among treatments in 2013.
Verbatim
e0“Sweet corn yield was similar among treatments in 2013”
Claim · model-written summary
Sweet corn yield was highest under ST in 2015.
Not reportedComparator
Verbatim
e0“highest in ST in 2015”
e1“Sweet corn yield was similar among treatments in 2013 but highest in ST in 2015”
Claim · model-written summary
Production input was highest in CT-BP and least in NT.
- Taxon
- eggplantSolanum melongenat0
- Treatment
- CT-BPe0
- Outcome
- production inpute0
- Direction
- higheste0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“production input was highest in CT-BP but least in NT”
t0“eggplant (2012 and 2014) and sweet corn (2013 and 2015)”
The same questions in other papers
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See all 1,099 papers →Claims are grouped by organism, treatment and what was measured or targeted. A paper counts as positive when any of its claims in the group is positive.