Long-term Reduced Tillage and Cover Cropping Change Soil Chemical Properties Under Irrigated Mediterranean Conditions

Long-term Reduced Tillage and Cover Cropping Change Soil Chemical Properties Under Irrigated Mediterranean Conditions
Author: Dominique Sylvia Dhainaut Medina
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2015
Genre:
ISBN: 9781339066974

Reducing tillage and fallow periods may improve agricultural sustainability, addressing issues such as soil degradation, water and air pollution, and rising energy costs. From 1999 to 2012 we compared conservation (CT) and standard tillage (ST) with (CC) and without (NO) cover crops for a cotton-tomato rotation in a Panoche clay loam soil in Five Points, CA. CT considered a reduction of tractor passes of 50% and 40% for tomato and cotton respectively. Soil samples from 0-15 cm and 15-30 cm were analyzed for total N and C, nitrate, Olsen phosphorus, interchangeable potassium, pH, electrical conductivity, and organic matter. After 13 years of rotation, both conservation tillage and cover cropping increased soil C and N. In CTCC, total C and N increased approximately 19 and 1.1 t ha−1 respectively in the 0- to 30 cm depth. In STNO the C was around 8 t ha−1 higher, while total N was approximately 0.2 t ha−1 lower than in 1999. Electrical conductivity increased in all treatments, primarily in the 15- to 30- cm depth, as a consequence of salts accumulation from irrigation water and fertilizers. The EC at that depth was significantly higher in ST than CT; reaching approximately 1.53 mmhos cm−1 compared to 1.23 mmhos cm−1 in CT. CTCC showed the highest values for extractable P and K. Neither pH nor nitrate content changed significantly in any of the treatments during the duration of the study. Total C, N, P and K were higher in CT and as a result, some agronomical features of the soil were improved. However, these nutrients were concentrated in the surface layer of soil, away from where the vast majority of roots are, which may limit their uptake by crops and thus other mechanisms would be needed to make them available. Under irrigated Mediterranean conditions, both CT and CC appear as feasible alternatives to conventional agriculture. If profitability is maintained, and water constraints are managed, these practices may become increasingly attractive for cotton and tomato farmers in the San Joaquin Valley.

Managing Cover Crops Profitably (3rd Ed. )

Managing Cover Crops Profitably (3rd Ed. )
Author: Andy Clark
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2008-07
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1437903797

Cover crops slow erosion, improve soil, smother weeds, enhance nutrient and moisture availability, help control many pests and bring a host of other benefits to your farm. At the same time, they can reduce costs, increase profits and even create new sources of income. You¿ll reap dividends on your cover crop investments for years, since their benefits accumulate over the long term. This book will help you find which ones are right for you. Captures farmer and other research results from the past ten years. The authors verified the info. from the 2nd ed., added new results and updated farmer profiles and research data, and added 2 chap. Includes maps and charts, detailed narratives about individual cover crop species, and chap. about aspects of cover cropping.

Soil Management and Climate Change

Soil Management and Climate Change
Author: Maria Angeles Munoz
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2017-10-16
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0128121297

Soil Management and Climate Change: Effects on Organic Carbon, Nitrogen Dynamics, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions provides a state of the art overview of recent findings and future research challenges regarding physical, chemical and biological processes controlling soil carbon, nitrogen dynamic and greenhouse gas emissions from soils. This book is for students and academics in soil science and environmental science, land managers, public administrators and legislators, and will increase understanding of organic matter preservation in soil and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. Given the central role soil plays on the global carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycles and its impact on greenhouse gas emissions, there is an urgent need to increase our common understanding about sources, mechanisms and processes that regulate organic matter mineralization and stabilization, and to identify those management practices and processes which mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, helping increase organic matter stabilization with suitable supplies of available N. - Provides the latest findings about soil organic matter stabilization and greenhouse gas emissions - Covers the effect of practices and management on soil organic matter stabilization - Includes information for readers to select the most suitable management practices to increase soil organic matter stabilization

Effects of Conservation Tillage on Ground Water Quality

Effects of Conservation Tillage on Ground Water Quality
Author: Terry J. Logan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2017
Genre: TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING
ISBN: 9781351071628

"Nowadays the environmental sustainability of the cropping systems is increasingly requested by the consumers. Conventional tillage practices, totally turning over the soil between the vineyard rows, may cause erosion due to rain as well as structure destruction of the soil in the long term. Conservation tillage is a soil management technique, poorly widespread in Sardinia, allowing cover cropping between vineyard rows. Furthermore, this technique makes the canopy development control of herbage possible by cutting it up during specific phenological phases. Conservation tillage usually involves direct benefits to farmers such as increasing soil fertility as well as reductionof tillage costs, soil erosion and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the atmosphere. This long term trial, during at least five years aims to assess the conservation tillage impact on chemical-physical soil characteristics in comparison with traditional tillage by evaluating the change of organic matter, C.E.C. and availability of major plant nutrients in the soil and to estimate their probable rise. The field plots are located in a 35% slope condition vineyard, showing massive erosion problem and organic matter low content. A split/plot design with four replications was set up, with the comparison between conservation and traditional tillage apart as main plots. Moreover, the effects of two different irrigation levels were evaluated in the subplots of each main plot. At the beginning of the trial (2011) a pedological survey was made. Three soil profiles were described and sampled along the field slope and soil sampling in each plot were made both to characterize the soil and to find the zero point. The soil chemical and physical characteristics were monitored through a second soil sampling made at the end of 2013. Conservation tillage caused increasing organic matter content and C.E.C. values. As for major plant nutrients in soil, results were more uncertain. Grapevine yield and quality parameters did not show any negative effect when passing from conventional to conservation tillage techniques. The trial provided a preliminary positive evaluation of conservation tillage. However, more years are required to confirm this trend."--Provided by publisher.

Intensive Cropping

Intensive Cropping
Author: Sohan S Prihar
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2000-01-25
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9781560228813

Explore new concepts for maximizing crop yields! Intensive Cropping: Efficient Use of Water, Nutrients, and Tillage is a compilation of current information on the interdependence of and synergies among water, nutrients, and energy in regard to increasing crop performance. This book explains the need for intensive cropping and explores the technologies and practices necessary for proper management of water, nutrients, and energy. With Intensive Cropping you will learn how to improve the quantity of the world's most important crops using methods that will minimize harm to the environment. This essential guide is a state-of-the-art account of the concepts and practices concerning the integrated use of water, nutrients, and energy in intensive cropping. Intensive Cropping combines basic and applied aspects of soil-water, nutrients, and energy management to help you optimize your crop yields and maximize the efficiency of intensively farmed regions. In Intensive Cropping, you will explore the need for extreme farming and related concerns and concepts, including: reducing runoff, deep seepage, and evaporation losses supplementing irrigation with surface and ground water understanding the process of water uptake and its effects on root dynamics and water use reducing leaching, erosion, and gasseus losses in your fields using combinations of organic manures, crop residues, chemical fertilizers, and biofertilizers for soil maintenance implementing conventional and emerging tillage systems, such as conservation tillage for improving soil quality examining case studies of contrasting edaphic requirements of rice-wheat systems Intensive Cropping brings you up-to-date on recent advances in the field, supported by relevant experimental observations on environmentally safe and effective ways to increase crop performance. By examining this new research on increasing crop production, you will be able to successfully increase crop yields in various climates and support the growing global demand for such resources.

Phosphorus in Action

Phosphorus in Action
Author: Else K. Bünemann
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 485
Release: 2010-11-08
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3642152716

Phosphorus (P) is a finite resource which is essential for life. It is a limiting nutrient in many ecosystems but also a pollutant which can affect biodiversity in terrestrial ecosystems and change the ecology of water bodies. This book collects the latest information on biological processes in soil P cycling, which to date have remained much less understood than physico-chemical processes. The methods section presents spectroscopic techniques and the characterization of microbial P forms, as well as the use of tracers, molecular approaches and modeling of soil-plant systems. The section on processes deals with mycorrhizal symbioses, microbial P solubilization, soil macrofauna, phosphatase enzymes and rhizosphere processes. On the system level, P cycling is examined for grasslands, arctic and alpine soils, forest plantations, tropical forests, and dryland regions. Further, P management with respect to animal production and cropping, and the interactions between global change and P cycling, are treated.

Long-term Impact of Tillage and Cropping Managements on Soil Hydro-physical Properties and Yield

Long-term Impact of Tillage and Cropping Managements on Soil Hydro-physical Properties and Yield
Author: Amin Nouri Gharahassanlou
Publisher:
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2017
Genre: Crop rotation
ISBN:

Soil physical and hydraulic properties control the major soil functions related to the imbibition, transmission and retention of water, air, heat and nutrients. Adoption of no-tillage in Tennessee through the last decades has considerably decreased the fluvial soil losses. However, the long-term effect of no-tillage on soil hydro-physical properties and its interaction with companion practices such as cover crops and crop sequence has not been fully discovered. In this project, three long-term experiments located in West Tennessee Research and Education Center in Milan and Jackson, TN were studied in 2015 and 2016 for soil hydro-physical properties. The effect of 34 years of tillage, fertilization and cover crop, 15 years of crop rotation on no-tillage with winter fallow and 37 years of a range of tillage intensities and no-tillage with and without cover crop on soil physical properties were assessed. Relationship between soil physical properties were determined and by relating the soil physical properties to corn, cotton and soybean yield and long-term yield stability, the most effective cropping and tillage managements were identified. Long-term no-tillage substantially improved soil aggregation, water infiltration and transmission and cotton yield than conventional tillage. Effect of cover crops on measured soil physical properties were less evident than the effect of no-tillage. However, planting hairy vetch and wheat cover crops improved the soil aggregation and increased the water infiltration and transmission significantly compared with no cover crop. No-tillage planted with hairy vetch cover crop experienced significantly higher quasi-steady and cumulative infiltration compared with the other treatment combinations in both years. Cropping corn, cotton and soybean in double cropping sequences did not favor soil in improved physical quality than monoculture while existence of corn in cropping system either as continuous cropping or in sequence improved soil physical quality. Corn rotated with soybean and cotton increased yield and decreased the long-term variance in soybean yield. Under sub-humid climate of Tennessee with relatively high decomposition rate of organic matter, the magnitude of residue turnover and below-ground root activity was found to be key factors increasing the no-tillage potential for additional improvement in soil quality and yield.

Building Soils for Better Crops

Building Soils for Better Crops
Author: Fred Magdoff
Publisher: Sare
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2009
Genre: Humus
ISBN: 9781888626131

"'Published by the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program, with funding from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture."