Warm season grass cover crops

Warm season grass cover crops are plants in the Poaceae family that are typically grown during the summer months or in arid areas. Several species are also commonly grown as grain and forage crops. In tropical and subtropical regions, warm season grass cover crops are used in grain and vegetable cropping systems. For example, in the Brazilian Cerrado, warm season grass cover crops are planted either at the end of the rainy season after corn (Zea mays L.) or soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] harvest or at the beginning of the rainy season prior to cash crop planting (de Assis, de Freitas and Mason, 2018). In subtropical regions such as South Texas, these cover crops are incorporated into vegetable systems (Soti and Racelis, 2020). Likewise, in temperate regions, they are used between short-duration vegetable crops (Mohler and Johnson, 2009; Besançon, Wasacz, and Heckman, 2021; Wauters et al., 2021; Schoolman and Arbuckle Jr, 2022) and, to a much lesser extent, in grain cropping systems. Lower acreage of warm season grass cover crops compared with winter cover crops in the Upper Midwest and Northeast United States is because of temporal overlap with summer cash crops (Snapp et al., 2005; Moore et al., 2016; Wallander et al., 2021). Despite their limited use relative to other types of cover crops in cooler production regions, warm season grass cover crops can fill an important agroecological niche and provide valuable benefits when strategically integrated into cropping systems.