ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of practices and paybacks using cover crops necessary for augmenting the productivity, profitability and feasibility of conservation agriculture (CA) systems. Cover crops have the potential to produce long term tangible benefits by breaking up compacted layers in the soil, reducing the need for overly-aggressive mechanical tillage resulting in better traffic conditions. Cover cropping may impact soil microbial functionality responsible for important soil ecosystem services. Living mulches are cover crops that co-exist with the cash crop during the growing season and continue its growth even after the cash crop’s harvest. Companion cropping can be a good weed suppressing technique but research helps in determining how suitable it may be in specific circumstances. Intercropping involves growing of two or more crops simultaneously in alternate rows having proper row arrangement, whereas in mixed cropping row arrangements are not maintained and different crop seeds are broadcasted randomly.
