Penn State receives $2.3 million organic-agriculture research grant
Researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences have been awarded a $2.3 million grant by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate how certain cover crops and rotations can improve production of organic commodities. The study's goal is to determine whether diverse cover crop mixtures -- as opposed to a single-species cover cropping -- can enhance ecosystem functions in a corn-soybean-wheat cash crop rotation that produces organic feed and forage. "There has been a lot of regional interest in these mixtures, or cover crop cocktails as they are sometimes called, so we want to provide farmers with information they need to design mixtures that serve them well,"said project leader Jason Kaye, associate professor of soil biogeochemistry (more)