Reducing climatic and disease risks through minimum tillage systems for vegetables

Reduced and modified tillage (RT) systems (e.g. no-, zone-, strip) represent strategies to reduce soil degradation and erosion and protect water quality. We have shown that zone and deep zone tillage systems can provide the environmental and economic benefits of an RT system for many vegetable crops without the harvest delays or losses observed in straight no-till. Each season, more vegetable growers express interest or try RT on their farms. It was our intent with this research to evaluate the ability of RT systems to ameliorate large fluctuations in water supply which may result from climate change, and in particular reduce crop losses to flooding, drought and vegetable diseases like Phytophthora capsici. During the first year of our project (2010), however, all of our field trials were lost in the catastrophic flooding of Hurricane Irene. As a result, we found many growers hesitant to commit to multiyear trials on their farm. Thus we were not able to continue with approach to on-farm experiments we had planned. After discussions with Northeast SARE, we have redirected our efforts to promote and expand growers testing RT on their farms.