The use of the consortium between cover crops and annual crops in the Cerrado, is an increasingly widespread practice, because of the possibility of deployment of cover crops during the development of annual crops by the difference in depth and seeding system. The objective was to evaluate the emergency and some agronomic characteristics of four species of cover crops at different seeding depths, to use them in consortium and oversown in annual crops. The experiment was conducted in a greenhouse, and the experimental design of randomized blocks in factorial arranged 4 x 7, where it was four cover crops: Brachiaria brizantha, B. decumbens, B. ruziziensis and Panicum maximum cv. Tanzania, and six depths of sowing and a cover of seed system (0 cm without any mulch, 0 cm with a mulch of soybean leaves, 1, 4, 8, 10 and 15 cm). The cover crops were cropped in vase for 40 days. We evaluated emergence index, emergence time, plant height, green biomass and dry biomass of the above-ground part, leaf area, root dry biomass and root length density. The largest development of the cover crops was detected in the sowing up to 1 cm of depth. The P. maximum showed no ability to use in consortium with annual crops. The sowing of the cover crops from 10 cm is not recommended.
Oversowing; no-till; crop-livestock integration; Brachiaria spp; P. maximum