A crop grown in the space between two main crops or at a time when no main crops are being grown.
Example sentencesExamples
- Winter oilseed rape can be used as a catch crop to reduce N leaching during the autumn - winter period because of its high capacity to take up nitrate from the soil.
- Research conducted in the Nebraska Panhandle found that seeding proso millet into summer fallow fields as a catch crop after hail resulted in significantly better yields than seeding it back into the destroyed wheat field.
- Given its high capacity to absorb mineral N from the soil profile in autumn and early winter, oilseed rape is also widely grown as a catch crop to reduce nitrate leaching from arable cropping systems.