Long-term response of groundcover components to organic and conventional weed control in shaded and open-sun coffee in Nicaragua

The weed-free period is employed to evaluate the effectiveness of practices to reduce crop loss to weeds. To orient sustainable cropping system approaches in perennial crops such as coffee which are often grown with trees, orchard floor or groundcover management has been proposed to address not only crop loss, but also soil protection, plant nutrition, habitat for beneficial organisms and labor and input costs. The results of a long-term experiment in Masatepe, Nicaragua, comparing two intensities of organic and conventional coffee management under four combinations of deciduous and evergreen trees either leguminous (Inga laurina and Samanea saman) and non-leguminous (Simarouba glauca and Tabebuia rosea) and full sun concluded that with selective weed management under trees, soil is protected with both low-growing, shallow-rooted cover vegetation and tree leaf litter without yield loss, while also reducing herbicide and labor use. Over 11 years, treatments with trees compared to full sun coffee showed near absence of bare soil (P