Nitrate leaching under permanent grassland, forage crops and winter cover crops

Farmers use commercially available grassland seed mixtures for revegetation. Three of these certified seed mixtures will be used in this project, with particular attention paid to their nitrogen uptake capacity.
The research project aims to demonstrate management practices in the Alpine region that prevent any serious nitrate pollution of groundwater bodies, thus avoiding the need to designate protected areas.
Since many farmers in the grassland sector want to operate as purely organic farms but wish to avoid purchasing expensive concentrated feed in the form of barley meal from organic farms, they are resuming cereal cultivation themselves. For this purpose, a combined lysimeter and field trial will compare nitrogen leaching from permanent grassland and forage crops with that from cereal cultivation (spring barley) combined with different winter cover crops (evergreen system) in the inner Alpine region.