Abstract
A long-term tillage experiment in Tänikon, Switzerland showed that compared to ploughed plots, untilled plots developed a compact soil structure with decreased porosity and a trend towards lower oxygen concentration in the soil air. All these factors resulted in lower plant yields. To investigate the influence of wheeling on these plots, the shallow-tilled plots were converted to controlled traffic farming (CTF) with no-tillage in 2008. The hypothesis is that a sustainable improvement in soil structure and plant development is achievable in areas with no traffic. In a field trial with four repeated blocks, ‘CTF no-tillage’ was compared with ‘random trafficked mouldboard ploughing’ and ‘random trafficked no-tillage’. The crop rotation was winter wheat – winter barley – meadow, established on luvisol (23% clay, 34% silt, 42% sand) with an annual rainfall of 1190mm and an average annual temperature of 8.4 °C. An intensive monitoring programme was set up for various parameters: Soil-surface-level changes, penetration resistance, macropore volume, soil-air composition, matric potential, volumetric soil-water content, emergence rate, intermediate harvests and harvest yield. Results for 2008 to 2011 show that traffic has a clearly negative impact on soil structure in all variants, even when wheelings are done with low tyre-inflation pressure. Traffic-induced soil-surface-level changes were small, but nonetheless affected the soil’s physical parameters. Soil penetration resistance is higher and soil oxygen content after precipitations lower in the trafficked areas than in traffic-free zones. Yield effects were not as pronounced as in other published field trials. CTF and no-tillage achieved approximately the same yield levels, but routine ploughing resulted in the highest yields. CTF leads to a certain improvement in the soil structure, but the plant response showed that more improvement is necessary to optimise yields.
Highlights
The main problem with no-tillage and minimum tillage techniques is the lower yield, commonly caused by reduced emergence and delayed early development of plants as a result of compacted structures in the topsoil (Anken et al 2004; Anken et al 2006)
controlled traffic farming (CTF) leads to a certain improvement in the soil structure, but the plant response showed that more improvement is necessary to optimise yields
In Controlled Traffic Farming (CTF), all work is carried out from permanent traffic lanes based on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) driven steering systems and closely matched machine widths
Summary
The main problem with no-tillage and minimum tillage techniques is the lower yield, commonly caused by reduced emergence and delayed early development of plants as a result of compacted structures in the topsoil (Anken et al 2004; Anken et al 2006). There is never any field traffic on the soil between traffic lanes and the topsoil is never compacted (Chamen 2006; Webb & Blackwell 2004; Hamza & Anderson 2005). Results from Great Britain and the Netherlands suggest that even under central European conditions, CTF can sustainably improve the efficiency of plant cultivation (Chamen et al 2003; Vermeulen & Korteweg 2007). The aim is to determine whether CTF can sustainably improve the efficiency of cropping systems
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