Soil Structure and Stability Features under Rotation Tillage

Abstract

In order to improve the soil quality and soil environment, make crop grow ecologically and healthily, and reach the goal of increasing regional agricultural production and income, this paper studied the soil structure and stability under different rotation methods. The sixtreatments ofrotation tillage were included: subsoiling-no tillage (N-S)T, subsoiling-tillage (S-C)T, tillage-notillage (C-N)T, notillage-notillage (N-N)T, subsoiling-subsoiling (S-S)T and tillage-tillage (C-C)T. Among them, tillage- tillage (C-C) T was regarded as the traditional method and control group. The result showed that: (1) compared with pre-experimental status and traditional measures, reasonable and scientific alternate farming measures were conducived to reduce soil bulk density, increase soil porosity, and improve soil permeability. In the 0-60cm soil layer, the effect of “no-tillage and subsoiling” treatment on the improvement of bulk density and porosity was the best. With pre-trial and conventional tillage as comparison, the soil bulk density decreased by 3.8% and 8.6%, and the soil porosity increased by 3.3% and 7.8%. (2) "No tillage - subsoiling” treatment can better improve soil stability in 0-40cm soil layer. The soil mechanical aggregate and the ratio of water-stable aggregate content can be increased by 11.4% and 5.2% in the layers beyond 0.25mm. Compared with the conventional tillage, the soil structure breaking rate and other factors were significantly decreased in rotation tillage. The effects of “no tillage-subsoiling” and “subsoiling-subsoiling” treatments on reducing the fractal dimensions of aggregates were significant.