Effect of fertilizers and soil tillage on corn yield under dry farming and irrigated conditions

Abstract

The effect of fertilizers and different soil tillage systems (minimum tillage, tillage with rotovator and conventional tillage) on corn yield was investigated over a period of 5 years. All variants were set up in conditions of dry farming and irrigation, as a three-factorial experiment using split-split plot design in four replications. All amounts of fertilizers were applied in the autumn. Irrigation increased corn yield by 0.94 t ha −1 (11%). The variant with 330 kg ha −1 NPK significantly outyielded the control (4% in dry conditions and 7% in irrigated conditions). Higher amounts of fertilizers did not considerably affect yield. In addition, the effect of fertilizers increased with tillage in dry conditions by 1.68 t ha −1 and in irrigated conditions by 2.70 t ha −1 (difference between minimum and conventional tillage with 330 kg ha −1 NPK), because soil nutrients were activated and more successfully used. In minimum tillage, crop yield was significantly lower than in variants with other types of soil tillage. This was found both irrigated (9.41 t ha −1 minimum tillage; 11.66 t ha −1 conventional tillage) and in dry farming conditions (8.65 t ha −1 minimum tillage; 10.27 t ha −1 conventional tillage). Contrary to available data in the literature, minimum tillage in our investigation did not give exceptionally good results.