b'PROBINGPOTENTIAL THEOF COVER CROPS A PhD student in Manitoba is surveying growers about a relatively new crop on the Canadian Prairiescover crops.BY: ASHLEY ROBINSONFOR CALLUM MORRISON, his interest in cover crops and the Canadian Prairies was the result of his travels and schooling.Morrison was working on his undergraduate thesis at the University of Ar-kansas as part of a summer exchange program from his university in Scotland. While in the United States he travelled to Minneapolis, Minn. to visit a pen pal, and the two then decided to travel to Fargo, N.D. and ventured across the border to Winkler, Man. to attend the towns harvest festival.Morrison made connections with the southern Manitoba ag community at the festival and found himself drawn to the area. He returned a month later for harvest and then again on a work visa. When time came for him to decide on where to complete his post graduate degree, he once again found himself drawn to the Canadian province.Through research he stumbled upon Yvonne Lawleys work on cover crops. Lawley, a professor at the University of Manitoba, had completed her own PhD on radish cover crops at the University of Maryland, and had recently started researching cover crops on the Canadian Prairies. I was excited by the work experience hed had in Manitoba and that he had gotten to know agriculture in Manitoba, and I thought hed be a great student. I was eager to take him on, Lawley says in a phone interview.For Morrison, this was the opportunity he had been looking for, so the Scot packed his bags and came to Canada to start his research into cover crops, and along the way found his research pivoting to survey farmers.We dont know everything there is to know yet about cover crops in the University of Prairies. This is somewhere I can learn about something which could have a Manitoba PhD studentlasting impact on Canadian soil, Morrison explains in a phone interview.Callum Morrison taking soil moisture readings at a soybean plot in a long-termPANDEMIC PIVOTcover cropping experiment inInitially Morrison was focusing his research on cover crop field trials. He had Carman, Man.five sites across Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Each trial was focused PHOTO: CHAMARAWEERASEKARA on researching the benefits of cover crops for commercial crops in the area, including a potato field in Lethbridge, Alta.28 SPUDSMART.COM WINTER 2021'