Advancing multifunctional IPM in row crops using cover crops

Planting cover crops in tandem with no-till can maintain resilient and profitable farms. While no-till operations cover nearly 200 million acres, cover crops only cover 15 million acres, though cover crop adoption increased by roughly 50% between 2012 and 2017. Slugs are a major pest of corn and soybeans in no-till operations in the Mid-Atlantic and parts of the Midwest, and are difficult to control because molluscicides are expensive, inconsistent, and have severe non-target effects. Cover crops potentially offer multifunctional, top-down and bottom-up control of slugs. Epigeal predators such as carabid beetles provide top-down control, with cover crops providing habitat and suitable microclimate to maintain predator populations. Cover crops offer bottom-up control by acting as a dietary distraction to slugs. Recently, growers in the Mid-Atlantic have been planting their cash crop into a standing cover crop before terminating the cover crop up to a week post planting. This practice, termed planting green, maximizes cover crop biomass and is hypothesized to further support top-down and bottom-up control of slugs. The goal of our research was to evaluate the effects of planting green on slug damage to corn and soy. We compared slug and carabid activity across three treatments (no cover crop, conventionally managed cover crop, and planted green cover crop) in corn and soybeans at three farms in Pennsylvania. Planting green reduced slug damage and slug activity-density relative to no and conventional cover crop treatments, demonstrating the potential for planted green cover crops to act as a pest suppressive cultural control