For centuries tillage has been used to prepare suitable seedbed to grow crops, and to control weeds and incorporate fertilizers, pesticides, manures and other amendments. In early years conversion of native ecosystems by tillage helped to unlock nutrients stored in soil organic matter, and thus `mine' naturally fertile soils to grow crops with minimum inputs for the growing population. However,...

Diversified crop rotation may improve production efficiency, reduce fertilizer nitrogen (N) requirements for corn (Zea mays L.), and increase soil carbon (C) storage. Objectives were to determine effect of rotation and fertilizer N on soil C sequestration and N use. An experiment was started in 1990 on a Barnes clay loam (U.S. soil taxonomy: fine-loamy, mixed, superactive, frigid Calcic Hapludo...

This study setout to investigate the effect of wheat residue, tillage, and nitrogen fertilizer management on some agronomic traits of soybean as a split split plot based on randomized complete block design with three replications. The main plots included wheat residue management: collecting and leaving residue and sub plot included tillage (without tillage and conventional tillage), and the sub...

The adoption of no tillage (NT) in crop production has been encouraged primarily due to its more significant benefits to the environment compared with other conservation tillage systems. There are nevertheless concerns about NT corn (Zea mays L.) performance from both shortand long-term perspectives. This study was conducted near Burlington, Nashua, Newell, Sutherland, and Crawfordsville in Iow...

Soil populations of plant-parasitic nematodes were monitored bimonthly for 18 months in irrigated and nonirrigated corn plantings using four production systems: conventional and minimum tillage with crop residue returned and minimum tillage with 60% or 90% of previous corn crop residue removed. Populations of Meloidogyne incognita, Scutellonema brachyurum, Pratylenchus scribneri, and Paratricho...

Long-term tillage negatively affects soil aggregation, but little is known about the short-term effects of tillage. We investigated the effects of intensive tillage (moldboard plowing) and conservation tillage (chisel plowing) on aggregate breakage during tillage in a long-term study located in the semiarid Ebro river valley (NE Spain). The type of tillage resulted in different soil aggregate d...

A field experiment was performed in Southwest Germany to examine the effects of long-term reduced tillage (2000–2012). Tillage treatments were deep moldboard plow: DP, 25 cm; double-layer plow; DLP, 15 + 10 cm, shallow moldboard plow: SP, 15 cm and chisel plow: CP, 15 cm, each of them with or without preceding stubble tillage. The mean yields of a typical eight-year crop rotation were 22% lower...

Wilhelm, W.W., Hinze, M.R. and Gardner, C.O., 1991. Maize hybrid response to tillage under irrigated and dryland conditions. Field Crops Res., 26: 57-66. The popularity of reduced-tillage cropping systems has emphasized the need to determine if maize (Zea mays L.) developed under conventional tillage systems (moldboard plow, disk, and harrow) is readily adaptable to conservation production syst...

A simple model is developed in which the density of weed seedlings emerging in a field is related to (1) the ability of seedlings to emerge from various depths in the soil, (2) the survival of seeds at different depths, and (3) the depth of seed burial in no tillage, rotary tillage, and plow tillage. Other tillage regimes are considered by analogy. Literature is reviewed to determine biological...

Agriculture is the single biggest user of land and water in Morocco; however its performances are still low due to high rainfall variation and rates of soil productivity depletion. Increasing concerns about soil and environment quality degradation have raised the need to review existing tillage management systems and develop new systems for seed-bed preparation. Consequently, No-tillage is foun...