Abstract
The conversion from conventional tillage (CT) to no-tillage (NT) of the soil is often suggested for positive long-term effects on several physical and hydraulic soil properties. In fact, although shortly after the conversion a worsening of the soil may occur, this transition should evolve in a progressive improvement of soil properties. Therefore, investigations aiming at evaluating the effects of NT on porous media are advisable, since such information may be relevant to better address the farmers’ choices to this specific soil conservation management strategy. In this investigation, innovative and standard methods were applied to compare CT and NT on two farms where the conversion took place 6 or 24 years ago, respectively. Regardless of the investigated farm, results showed negligible differences in cumulative infiltration or infiltration rate, soil sorptivity, saturated hydraulic conductivity, conductive pores size, or hydraulic conductivity functions. Since relatively small discrepancies were also highlighted in terms of bulk density or soil organic carbon, it was possible to conclude that NT did not have a negative impact on the main physical and hydraulic properties of investigated clay soils. However, a significantly higher number of small pores was detected under long-term NT compared to CT, so we concluded that the former soil was a more conductive pore system, i.e., consisting of numerous relatively smaller pores but continuous and better interconnected. Based on measured capacity-based indicators (macroporosity, air capacity, relative field capacity, plant available water capacity), NT always showed a more appropriate proportion of water and air in the soil.
Highlights
No-tillage, zero tillage, and direct drilling or sod-seeding are terms to define a soil management system in which field crops are sown without any main soil tillage, determining a very limited disturbance of the soil, which may arise by the passage of the drill coulters during sowing [1]
Since in Beerkan Estimation of Soil Transfer (BEST) the saturated soil water content, θ s, is estimated from the value of BD, significantly lower values of θ s were detected in the former case on the no-tillage plot (Table 3)
The literature suggests that seasonal changes in soil physical properties may be caused by several physical factors, for example, the arrangement of soil particles, pore system configuration by several physical factors, for example, the arrangement of soil particles, pore system configuration and compaction due to raindrop impact [40,70,71], and contrasting results may be summed according and compaction due to raindrop impact [40,70,71], and contrasting results may be summed according to selected investigation, findings basically agree that soil tillage represents the to selected investigation, findings basically agree that soil tillage represents main factor that can sharply reduce soil density and increase hydrodynamic properties [70]
Summary
No-tillage, zero tillage, and direct drilling or sod-seeding are terms to define a soil management system in which field crops are sown without any main soil tillage, determining a very limited disturbance of the soil (i.e., lower than 5 cm), which may arise by the passage of the drill coulters during sowing [1]. Compared to the different areas where such techniques are quite common, i.e., America and Australia [2], in Europe (EU 27), minimum tillage and sod-seeding is only applied on 3.5 million hectares (Eurostat SAPM and FSS, 2010) which represent 3.5% of total arable land area. Follows this trend since, in mid-2013, the proportion between conventional tillage (CT) and no-tillage (NT)
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