Cottney, PaulWilliams, Paul N.White, EthelBlack, Lisa2021-06-292021-06-292021-01-26Cottney, P., Williams, P. N., White, E. and Black, L. (2021) ‘The perception and use of cover crops within the island of Ireland’, Annals of Applied Biology. doi: 10.1111/aab.12678.0003-47461744-7348 (electronic)https://doi.org/10.1111/aab.12678Publication history: Accepted - 14 December 2020; Published - 26 January 2021.The integration of cover crops within arable rotations is becoming increasingly popular due to their widely acknowledged benefits. Subsidisation of cover cropping is available to eligible farmers in the Republic of Ireland (ROI) but not to Northern Ireland (NI) farmers. There has been little research focus on ROI and NI growers' perceptions about the husbandry associated with cover crops and the benefits of growing them. Surveys to gauge farmer use and perception of cover crops were conducted at two arable conferences, with 55 respondents in NI and 77 in ROI (132 respondents in total). Growers used cover crops mainly to improve and maintain soil structure in an overall bid to enhance soil health in ROI, whereas in NI it was predominantly for forage. The impact of subsidies provided by Ireland and its stipulated policy influences species choice, and farmers were more likely to plant cover crops after later harvested commercial crops, for example, September. Compared to growers in NI, they were found predominantly to plant after crops harvested in August. In ROI, 63% of respondents receiving subsidies would continue to use cover crops if this monetary incentive ceased.en© 2021 The Authors. Annals of Applied Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Association of Applied Biologists. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.cover cropsenvironmentsoilsurveyArticle