Virginia Tech student creates opportunity for expanding domestic edamame production

So the overarching goal of this project is to develop integrated weed management techniques for edamame. As of now, the consumer demand for edamame is increasing, but most of the demand is met by import. There are several production constraints for the farmers to adopt edamame at a larger scale, one of them being the weed management. To address this limitation, we are testing the use of different cover crop species integrated with different termination timing of cover crops so that we can compare the biomass producing potential and its suppression on the weeds. After the termination of the cover crop, it biomass turns into a mulch layer, which can reduce the growth of weeds in several ways. We have two different termination timings for the cover crop: four weeks before planting of edamame and one week before planting of edamame. We selected for this study five different cover crop species: cereal rye, black oats, hairy vetch crimson clover, and rape seed. For taking the biomass sample for the cover crops, we put 0.25 meters square quadrants at two random spots. So we just clipped whatever the above ground plant material is for the cover crops. And collected it into paper bags, and then we put them in our dryer for drying it up to a constant weight so that we can compare it among the different treatments. Finding a good combination for the edamame cultivar, cover crop species, and the termination timing would help farmers reduce on the chemical costs, and it would help to sustainably manage herbicide resistant weeds. If the farmers have all the tools for managing the weeds in edamame that would be a one step forward in the adoption of edamame at a larger scale.