cover-cropping
Cover cropping is the practice of growing plants specifically to protect and enrich soil rather than for harvest, improving soil structure, reducing erosion, and suppressing weeds. For plant science, cover crops are particularly significant because they enhance microbial communities in the soil, driving nitrogen cycling and nutrient availability that directly influence the physiology and productivity of subsequent crops.
open_in_new WikipediaPubMed · 2026-05-02
Planting cover crops between main harvests leaves a lasting benefit in the soil: soybeans grown in that soil later showed significantly less fungal root rot. The soil microbiome — the community of bacteria and fungi living around roots — was reshaped in ways that appear to help plants fight off disease.
Soils with a cover crop history significantly reduced Fusarium root rot severity in soybeans compared to soils without cover crop history.
Fusarium inoculation reduced bacterial Shannon diversity and enriched fast-growing copiotrophic bacteria (including Pseudomonas, Rhizobium, and Flavobacterium genera) regardless of cover cropping treatment.
Cover cropping increased microbial diversity and enriched potentially beneficial taxa linked to disease suppression (e.g., Streptomyces, Flavobacterium, Paraburkholderia) but had limited impact on soybean cyst nematode infection levels.
