A major challenge for agriculture is to enhance productivity with minimum impact on the environment. Several studies indicate that cover crops could replace anthropogenic inputs and enhance crop productivity. However, so far, it is unclear if cover crop effects vary between different cropping systems, and direct comparisons among major arable production systems are rare. Here we compared the sh...

Effect of haying (hayed or not hayed prior to tillage), tillage (notillage, minimum tillage, or conventional tillage), and N fertilization (0 or 67 kg ha ') on surface infiltration rates, Q(h), was evaluated for Conservation Research Program (CRP) site conversion. Soils included Amor loam (fine-loamy, mixed, superactive, frigid Typic Haplustoll) and Cabba silt loam (loamy, mixed, superactive, c...

A two year (2010-2012) study was conducted to assess the effects of different agronomic management practices on the emissions of CO2 from a field of non-irrigated wheat planted on China's Loess Plateau. Management practices included four tillage methods i.e. T1: (chisel plow tillage), T2: (zero-tillage), T3: (rotary tillage) and T4: (mold board plow tillage), 2 mulch levels i.e., M0 (no corn re...

The weed seed bank of a long-term tillage study in subarctic Alaska was studied at the end of 10 years of continuous spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). Tillage treatments were: no-till, disked once (spring), disked twice (spring and fall), and chisel plow (fall). Soil cores were obtained from each tillage treatment and seeds were manually separated from soil after washing through sieves. Tilla...

Over the last 50 years, the most increase in cultivated land area globally has been due to a doubling of irrigated land. Long-term agronomic management impacts on soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks, soil greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and global warming potential (GWP) in irrigated systems, however, remain relatively unknown. Here, residue and tillage management effects were quantified by measur...

NT will reduce soybean grain yields and economic returns, particularly during the first few years of adoption. Farmers have been encouraged to adopt no-tillage (NT) because Soybean grain yield response to NT systems depends of its positive environmental effects compared with other conservation tillage systems. Nevertheless, poor crop performance under NT manmainly upon soil drainage and previou...

Effects of six tillage practices on some soil microbiological properties and crop yields were evaluated for a clay soil (Typic Haploxererts) under semi-arid Mediterranean conditions in a three year study (2006-2009). The experiment was designed as a completely randomized-block with three replications. Treatments were: conventional tillage with residue incorporated (CT1), conventional tillage wi...

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...

John R. Teasdale is a plant physiologist at the Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Beltsville, Maryland. N o-tillage cropping systems are known to provide many benefits to soils that can enhance production of grain crops. Many of the improvements to soils that result from no-tillage production such as increases in soil aggregation, water-holding cap...