Cover crops in a vineyard: three years of soil and yield monitoring
Regenerative News · Study accepted on 5 October 2026
Vegetation between vineyard rows influences both the soil and the crop. A study in southern Brazil monitored these relationships over three growing seasons in a Viognier vineyard.
Five management approaches
The researchers compared:
- Spontaneous vegetation with herbicide applied along the vine rows.
- Spontaneous vegetation without herbicide.
- Cover-crop systems using grasses and clover.
- Vetch in winter and a grass in summer.
- Multispecies cover-crop mixtures.
They recorded cover-crop biomass, nutrients, soil properties and vine responses.
What changed in the soil
The vetch system and the multispecies mixtures generally produced more biomass and accumulated more nutrients than spontaneous vegetation.
Management also affected organic carbon, moisture and selected topsoil characteristics, with responses varying between years.
Yield responses
In the third season, spontaneous vegetation without herbicide and the vetch system produced approximately 20% higher yields than the herbicide treatment. Differences in yield and grape quality varied between seasons.
Connection with our field work
At our Center, we aim to connect vegetation management in olive groves with soil microbiology monitoring. We are interested in which plants support soil life and how to manage vegetation according to the season and the needs of the crop, following our training at the Soil Food Web School.
Primary study: Teixeira-Loss and colleagues, Frontiers in Environmental Science. The abstract of the accepted paper is available; the final formatted version is still awaited.