Effects of conventional and reduced tillage methods on some traits of wheat in cotton-wheat system

Abstract

Tillage is one of the
 most important agronomical practices especially for plant height (PH), grain
 yield (GY) and yield components in wheat production. This study was carried out
 in 2007–08 and 2008–09 growing seasons in
 Kahramanmaras, Turkey, to investigate
 response of five wheat cultivars (Adana, Ceyhan, Dogankent, Menemen and
 Yuregir) to conventional (CT) and reduced tillage (RT) systems after cotton
 harvest for PH, number of fertile
 spikes per m2 (SM), spike length (SL), number of fertile spikelets
 spike–1 (SS), number of grains spike–1
 (GS), 1000–kernel
 weight (KW) and GY components.
 The soil was ploughed at a depth of 25–30 cm in CT system, while it was not
 used in RT. The results indicated that all traits had greater values in 2008–09 than in 2007–08 except KW and GY. The tillage
 systems significantly affected
 PH, SM, SL, SS, GS and GY
 except KW. Over the two years,
 values of all traits in CT were higher than those of  RT. There
 was a significant and positive correlation for GY, SS, GS and KW between CT and
 RT. The cultivars were affected by year and tillage system. Dogankent
 cultivar had better performance and stable for most of the traits compared to
 others under CT and RT in both years.