In recent years, cover crops have become a more popular component of corn, cotton and soybean production systems in the U.S. According to a recent SARE survey, farmers planting cover crops ranked weed control as the fourth highest reason for adopting them on their operations. This presentation will provide consultants, growers, and other practitioners with a brief summary of results related to the effects of different cover crop species on the emergence of winter and summer annual weed species. By the end of this presentation, the practitioner should be able to understand that the inhibitory potential of a given cover crop species is a function of the species selected, the amount of cover crop biomass accumulated, the timing of cover crop termination, the rate of cover crop decay, and the type of weed species present.
