Cereal rye seeding rate does not affect magnitude of weed suppression when planting green within Mid-Atlantic United States


 In the Mid-Atlantic United States, there is increasing interest in delaying cereal rye termination until after soybean planting (i.e., planting green). Improved understanding of cereal rye seeding rate effects is needed to balance weed and agronomic management goals. We investigated the effects of cereal rye seeding rates on weed control and crop performance when planting green in complementary experiments in two Mid-Atlantic US regions. The Pennsylvania experiment was replicated at three site-years and the Delaware experiment at two site-years. In both experiments, population-level weed responses were evaluated across four cereal rye seeding rates: 0, 51, 101, 135 kg ha-1. The Delaware experiment also implemented a nitrogen treatment factor (0 and 34 kg N ha-1; spring applied). Both experiments showed that integrating cereal rye in the fall significantly improved winter- and summer- annual weed suppression compared to the fallow control, but no differences in total cereal rye biomass production or weed suppression were found among alternative cereal rye seeding rates (51 to 135 kg ha-1). Soybean yield did not differ among treatments in any of the studies. These results show there is no reason to increase cereal rye seeding rates for weed suppression services or decrease seeding rates for agronomic reasons (i.e., soybean population and yield) when employing planting green tactics in no-till soybean production within the Mid-Atlantic US region.