LCCMR Projects

Cover Crop Study

Collaborations for this project include the University of Minnesota, AURI ,and the Morris USDA. The goal of this study is to determine the differences in water quality under three different cropping systems. There are four different site locations for this study. The primary location is at the CLC Ag Center. This trial is 18 acres in size and is located under an irrigation pivot. The three different treatments are replicated four times across this field in 1.5 acre plots. Three area farmers’ fields are the other sites that have each of the treatments replicated once with 2 acre plots. A rotation of corn and soybeans will be no-tilled into the plots over the coarse of the 5 year project. The camelina was harvested at the end of June by the U of M.

Each treatment has been instrumented with three lysimeters for a total of 63 lysimeters. TDRs have also been implemented across the trial at the CLC Ag Center for determining water flow horizontally through the soil profile at different depths to help develop models. Water infiltration test were conducted across all the plots this year with the Morris USDA Soil Lab.

HEMP

The goal of this project is to determine the water quality impacts of hemp compared compared to traditional crops such as corn and soybeans. Other factors such as hemp fiber and seed production will be part of this project.