The soil degradation caused by conventional tillage in rain-fed areas of northwest China is known to reduce the water-use efficiency and crop yield because of reduced soil porosity and the decreased availability of soil water and nutrients. Thus, we investigated the effects of straw incorporation on soil aggregates with different straw incorporation rates in semiarid areas of southern Ningxia f...

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) production in the future aims to increase productivity every year with high input technology, including irrigated rice. However, practices of rice fields have a methane (CH4) potential. Soil tillage could affect CH4 emission conditions. Puddling and flooding through soil create reduction conditions that promote by methanogenic bacteria. The objective was determine effect ...

A field experiment was conducted to provide a complete greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting for global warming potential (GWP), net GWP, and greenhouse gas intensity (GHGI) from no-tillage (NT) paddy fields with different amounts of oilseed rape residue mulch (0, 3000, 4000, and 6000 kg dry matter (DM) ha(-1)) during a rice-growing season after 3 years of oilseed rape-rice cultivation. Residue mulch...

Conservation tillage systems that reduce soil erosion and maintain or increase soil carbon offer long-term benefits for producers in the inland Pacific Northwestern United States but could result in reduced grain yields due to increased pressure from weeds, disease, and insect pests. Our objective was to compare runoff, soil erosion, and crop yields from a conventional tillage, wheat-fallow two...

Around 4.4 million ha of land in USDA Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) contracts will expire between 2013 and 2018 and some will likely return to crop production. No-till (NT) management offers the potential to reduce the global warming costs of CO2 , CH4 , and N2 O emissions during CRP conversion, but to date there have been no CRP conversion tillage comparisons. In 2009, we converted portio...

Conservation agriculture (CA) practices are being widely promoted in many areas in sub-Saharan Africa to recuperate degraded soils and improve ecosystem services. This study examined the effects of three tillage practices [conventional moldboard plowing (CT), hand hoeing (MT) and no-tillage (NT)], and three cropping systems (continuous maize, soybean-maize annual rotation, and soybean/maize int...

Long-term assessment of NO3-N leaching losses to subsurface drainage "tile" water from different tillage systems and N application rates can help mitigate the environmental concerns of production agriculture. A three-phase field study was conducted to investigate the impact of two tillage systems (chisel vs. no-till) and different N application management systems on flow-weighted NO3-N concentr...

Nitrogen (N) application management needs to be refined for low yielding environments under dryland conditions. This 3-yr study examined nitrogen fertilization management effects on corn (Zea mays L.) plant characteristics and grain yield in rain fed environment under conventional tillage system. Nitrogen fertilization management consisted of two timing methods of N application [all N at planti...

and in the tillage pan was maintained at a high level only when crop residue returns increased and soil pH Long-term experiments are ideal for evaluating the influence of was maintained above 5.6 (Pikul and Allmaras, 1986). agricultural practices on soil organic carbon (SOC) accretion. Little is known about the influence of tillage and N fertilization on SOC Long-term use of N fertilizer also r...