Cover crop management

In different parts of the world when traditional management and planting methods are used, ploughing the soils which buries plant residue and leaves, the soil will remain naked and vulnerable to water and wind erosion process. The use of these cultivation methods in heavy sloped areas in the tropics and subtropics, undergoing heavy rainfall, has caused severe erosion and a dramatic loss of fertility in many farming areas. The constant adding organic carbon to the soil through plant cultivation, as well as keeping plant residue, preferably on the soil surface (no-tillage) are important measures to preserve and foster organic matter balance in the soil. Thus, plants used as cover crop given their high capacity to produce vegetal biomass and roots, with an important direct and indirect effects in the soil-water-plant system, play a fundamental role when they are an adequate part of orderly rotation systems with cash and food crops.