Farm profitability and environmental stewardship can go hand-in-hand when planting cover crops, according to Purdue University’s Shalamar Armstrong

Armstrong, an associate professor of agronomy at Purdue, recently worked on a multi-year research project to determine how precision planting cereal rye and Balansa clover cover crops could affect nutrient uptake and corn yield. 

The experiments, conducted in collaboration with Amir Sadeghpour at Southern Illinois University and Andrew Margenot at the University of Illinois, took place on working farm fields in central Illinois and southern Indiana. The project was funded by a research and education grant from the North Central Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program.

Precision Trials

Armstrong and his team precision planted cereal rye and Balansa clover, a species proposed as an overwintering alternative to cereal rye. The control plots were drilled with each species of cover crop, while the precision plots had alternated 30-inch-wide rows of the cover crop and 30-inch-wide rows skipped for the future no-till corn crop. 

“We stopped up the drill with duct tape — very economical,” Armstrong says, “It allows me to see if I can plant more strategic rows with less seed and get the same performance.”