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Cover crop decision support tools
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17 June 2026

To maximize the multiple agroecosystem services that cover crops provide, farmers and their advisers need detailed information. Assorted groups have sought to distill the large amount of information pertaining to cover crop management into decision support tools to provide recommendations. However, such tools have suffered from concerns including a lack of site-specificity, failure to integrate existing data across agricultural systems and scales, and suboptimal user interface design. This chapter reports on tools developed by the Precision Sustainable Agriculture (PSA) network that are site-specific, relevant across the US, and user-friendly. We provide examples of a cover crop species selector and a cover crop nitrogen calculator. Future challenges relate to the amount of data held within tools, the need for regular updates, and the difficulty in modeling interactions between cash and cover crop genetics, the environment, and management to provide the best possible recommendations.
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Current cover crop decision support tools and theirlimitations
- 3 The Precision Sustainable Agriculture (PSA) network
- 4 Developing new cover crop decision support toolsby the PSA network: key issues
- 5 The PSA Cover Crop Species Selector Tool
- 6 Measuring cover crop nitrogen release and biomassdecomposition: The PSA Cover Crop NitrogenCalculator
- 7 Future challenges
- 8 Conclusion
- 9 Where to look for further information
- 10 References