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...

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...

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...

Reduced tillage methods for field crop production result in less disruption of soil structure and often increased amounts of crop residue maintained on the soil surface. The combination of these two factors produces increased surface soil aggregation. This study was conducted in the field and within pots to determine whether surface residue by itself improves soil aggregation within a short per...

Lack of sufficient information on conservation tillage systems leads to the dominating use of conventional tillage practice in most parts of Iran. Testing other management practices may help in decision making regarding the types of tillage systems that reduce soil deterioration. A three- years field experiment was conducted to study the effects of conventional (CT), reduced (RT) and no-till (N...

Tillage erosion is a potential contributor to the total soil erosion occurring within cultivated fields. No study has been carried out on tillage erosion associated with cereal-based production systems, which are the predominant form of crop production in the Canadian Prairies. Previous tillage translocation studies have focused on primary tillage implements (i.e. mouldboard and chisel ploughs)...

The percentage of soil pore space filled with water (percent waterfilled pores, % WFP), as determined by water content and total porosity, appears to be closely related to soil microbial activity under different tillage regimes. Soil incubated in the laboratory at 60% WFP supported maximum aerobic microbial activity as determined by CO2 production and O2 uptake. In the field, % WFP of surface n...

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...

BACKGROUND Evaluating the net exchange of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in conjunction with soil carbon sequestration may give a comprehensive insight on the role of agricultural production in global warming. MATERIALS AND METHODS Measured data of methane (CH(4)) and nitrous oxide (N(2)O) were utilized to test the applicability of the Denitrification and Decomposition (DNDC) model to a winte...

A 2-year field study was conducted in the southern High Plains region of Texas to evaluate the effect of tillage system and cotton planting date window on seasonal abundance and activity patterns of predacious ground beetles. The experiment was deployed in a split-plot randomized block design with tillage as the main-plot factor and planting date as the subplot factor. There were two levels for...