Abstract
We investigated the effects of strip tillage, which tills the soil only at planting rows, on soil thermal and moisture conditions under a drained paddy field to evaluate its adaptability for dryland soybean cultivation. A drained Ando-soil paddy field, which had been used as a rice paddy in the previous cropping season, was pan-broken and tilled for a strip tillage plot (ST) and a conventional tillage plot (CT). The difference in daily mean soil temperature at a 13-14cm depth between ST and CT (ST – CT) ranged from –0.4 to +0.4ºC with a mean of 0.25ºC from sowing to June 31. Soil water content was higher at ST than at CT, but the soil matric potential was not significantly different between ST and CT. After 95mm of rainfall, which saturated the top 30cm of soil, the soil at ST drained as quickly as the soil at CT. We hypothesize that pan-breaking increased soil hydraulic conductivity, which resulted in this quick drainage. No significant differences in the growth and yield of soybean were observed between ST and CT. Therefore, with drainage methods such as pan-breaking, strip tillage can provide almost the same soil thermal and moisture conditions as conventional tillage at a drained Ando-soil paddy field for dryland crop cultivation.
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