Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Completed Competitive Grant

Optimizing legume establishment in winter cereal grains

Project ID: E2006-10

Abstract

Project investigators sought to determine the resiliency of the winter cereal legume intercrop system in relation to agronomic management and to try to predict legume establishment.

Key Question: How can we determine the resiliency of the winter cereal-legume intercrop system to agronomic management?

Findings: Researchers found that the intercrop is highly resilient to agronomic management and the most important agronomic decisions are the winter cereal variety and legume used in the intercrop system.

Lead investigator: Emily Heaton, ISU Agronomy

Co-Investigator(s):

Jeremy Singer, National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment

Year of grant completion: 2011

This competitive grant project was part of the Leopold Center's Ecology Initiative.

Topics: Multi-year rotations, low-external input