Modification of Tillage Implements for Alley Cropping System

John Morris Togo Kaji,Dr Adam Hessain Yagoob,Wang Decheng,Sheikh El Din E A

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3985914

John Morris Togo Kaji, Dr Adam Hessain Yagoob + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3985914

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Abstract

Sustainable alley agriculture in the agro-forestry cropping system becomes a great challenge due to the lack of suitable land preparation, using the conventional tillage system “The three-bottom disc plough”. This research is an attempt to modify the conventional tillage implement for better use in agroforestry system. The modified Tillage System, in comparison with 3-bottom disc plough, showed significantly lower tractor actual speed, higher wheel slippage, effective field capacity and higher draught requirements. For the secondary operations, no significant differences were detected between modified tandem and the offset disc harrow, except for the tractor actual speed, where the offset disc harrow resulted in significant higher speed. Moreover, the modified tillage implements shows lower un-ploughed length area within the alley, and two meters increase in the preparation of the available cultivated area compared to the conventional system, and significantly lower bulk density at crop emergence stage only. The modified implements resulted in higher initial and final infiltration rate after seedbed preparation and at harvest in comparison with the conventional system. With regards to crop yield, the modified tillage system resulted in significant higher grain yield in the first and second seasons, in comparison with the use of the conventional tillage system. Keywords: draught requirements, tillage implements, alley cropping, soil cold size, bulk density, superficial lateral root, infiltration rate

Highlights

The shortest width of cut of the three-bottom disc plough is not applicable for the tractor to pass underneath of the trees canopies; it is not possible to plough a considerable area to the north and south direction of the tree rows, resulted in un-ploughed areas along the alley edges, so the three bottom disc plough is not effective in pruning lateral roots of trees, reducing crop yield
Tractor actual speed and implement performance Results of the tractor actual speeds with the use of primary tillage implements showed that the 3-bottom disc plough resulted in significantly (P = 0.05) higher tractor actual speed in comparison with the use of the modified chisel plough
For the secondary tillage implements, the offset disc harrow resulted in significantly (P = 0.05) higher tractor actual speed compared to the modified tandem disc harrow

Summary

Introduction

The shortest width of cut of the three-bottom disc plough is not applicable for the tractor to pass underneath of the trees canopies; it is not possible to plough a considerable area to the north and south direction of the tree rows, resulted in un-ploughed areas along the alley edges, so the three bottom disc plough is not effective in pruning lateral roots of trees, reducing crop yield. To overcome the problems of alley land preparation, a suitable tillage tool should be modified to achieve the followings; a) Maximum utilization of the available land within the alley cropping system. D) The modified tillage tools should match the available medium size tractor drawbar power. The experiment was laid-out in 8meter alley spacing where Acacia ampliceps trees were grown, and considered one of the agro-forestry trees that have a heavy canopy and competitive lateral roots in the upper layers of the alley soil. The evaluation covered the tractor and implement performance, maximum utilization of the available alley land, superficial root pruned length, soil clod size distribution, infiltration rate, soil bulk density and its corresponding soil moisture content, in addition to yield and yield components.

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Results

Conclusion