There is a problem with water erosion in organic growing of soybeans. A possible solution is growing under a mulch layer or cover crop. While this is usual practice in parts of the US, there is little success in Germany. A new approach is the use of straw material as a mulch to prevent erosion and suppress weed. The interrelation between weeds, soybean growth, yield and crude protein content was determined in a field experiment. There were significant differences in weed covering and weed species as well as in the yield between variants with straw mulch and without. The weed density was highest in the variant without any treatment (21.0 {%} of surface) and lower in the variants with straw mulch (12.7 {%}). The highest yield was in the control variant (15.8 dt/ha), the lowest in the variant with straw cover 6 t/ha (2.6 dt/ha). There is still no practical relevance of growing soybeans with straw mulch layer because of low yields and high weed density.     «

There is a problem with water erosion in organic growing of soybeans. A possible solution is growing under a mulch layer or cover crop. While this is usual practice in parts of the US, there is little success in Germany. A new approach is the use of straw material as a mulch to prevent erosion and suppress weed. The interrelation between weeds, soybean growth, yield and crude protein content was determined in a field experiment. There were significant differences in weed covering and weed specie...     »