UCD Undergrad, Anna Gomes, Shares Research on Tradeoffs of Cover Crop Water Use in NRI Project Study!

May 1, 2018

UCD Undergrad, Anna Gomes, Shares Research on Tradeoffs of Cover Crop Water Use in NRI Project Study!

May 1, 2018

April 27, 2018 

 

Anna Gomes, a senior student in Agricultural Education at UC Davis, presented the research project that she is working on at the 2018 Undergraduate Research Conference that was held on the UC Davis campus on April 27th.  Her work focuses on tradeoffs associated with using cover crops in annual cropping systems and is based on data from the CASI National Research Initiative (NRI) Project that has been underway since 1999. 

 


Anna's presentation provided findings from the past two years of intensive soil water content monitoring during the winter cover crop growing period.  She has been working with a large team of collaborators that includes Dan Munk, UCCE Advisor in Fresno County, Daniele Zaccaria and Samuel Sandoval-Solis, UCCE Water Management Specialists at UCD, Alyssa DeVincentis, graduate student in Sandoval-Solis's lab, Sloane Rice, Junior Specialist in Zaccaria's lab, Khaled Bali, UCCE Water Management Specialist at the Kearney Agricultural Center in Parlier, and a number of long-time local farmer, private sector and NRC partners who've been involved with the work in various ways.  This team is working at a number of farm sites throughout California's Central Valley to determine impacts of growing cover crops on soil water storage during the winter.   The research team hopes to have their data published by the end of summer 2019.

 

 

 

 

 


By Jeffrey P Mitchell
Author - CE Cropping Systems Specialist