Crop Productivity of Wheat under Different Tillage Systems in Semi-Arid Conditions of Sudan

Abstract

This study was conducted at Tamboul Testing and Training Centre, Sudan located at 150km south east of Khartoum during two different seasons (1995 -1996) to investigate the response of wheat productivity to different tillage systems on a heavy clay soil in an area of 2.4ha. The treatments were deferent tillage systems (Zero tillage, ridging, shallow harrowing, heavy harrowing, disc ploughing, disc ploughing+harrowing, split ridging and ridging thrice). These treatments were arranged in randomized complete block design (RCBD) with four replications. A computer program (SAS statistical package) was used to analyze the data while the variations among the means were checked by the least significant difference (LSD).The parameters tested were soil physical properties, crop water requirements (mm/day), plant height (cm), No. of tillering and crop productivity (kg/ha). The results indicated that, tillage systems significantly (P ≤ 0.05) affected clearly soil physical properties. Disc ploughing+harrowing decreased the bulk density (1.3g/cm3) as compared to zero tillage system (1.5g/cm3). Plant height, tillering and yield significantly (P ≤ 0.05) affected by the different tillage systems. Disc ploughing+harrowing gave the highest mean values of plant height (65.83cm), tillering (246) and crop productivity (1305kg/ha) as compared to zero tillage which ranked the least (43.26cm, 202 and 806.8kg/ha, respectively). It is concluded that for increasing the productivity of wheat crop, Disc ploughing+harrowing should be followed and adopted as one of the most important technical packages.