Abstract
An improved understanding of the effect of conservation tillage on soil physicochemical quality indicators is obligatory to manage and conserve soil in a climate change scenario. Tillage strategies change soil physicochemical characteristics, consequently modifying crop yields. Conservation tillage is generally used to improve the soil physicochemical characteristics globally. However, the impact of conservation tillage on different soil depths under wheat cultivation is not well documented. A 3-year study was conducted using a randomized complete block design (RCDB). The objective of this research was to specifically study soil physicochemical indicators (soil bulk density, porosity, hydraulic conductivity, water content, temperature, nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, C:N ratio, pH) and (crop yield) in conventional tillage (CT), straw incorporation into the conventionally tilled soil (CTS), no-tillage (NT), and stubble-retention to the no-tilled soil (NTS) measures under wheat monocropping system across different soil layers. Averaged over 0–40 cm soil layer, the results depicted scarce differences among the tillage practices regarding soil bulk density, porosity, water content and hydraulic conductivity. CT increased soil temperature over conservation tillage systems. Overall, conservation tillage improved soil total nitrogen, available phosphorous, total potassium, C:N ratio and yield than CT, whilst it decreased soil pH. We conclude that NTS and CTS are the best strategies to enhance soil health under wheat mono-cropping system conditions.
Highlights
Cultivated soils in many semi-arid and dry regions, like the Dingxi Northern China zone, have low organic matter because of climatic limitations that affect net primary yield
Over wide-ranging estimation score consequences obtained from Z-score calculation of the overall research data that we have measured in the three years including soil physicochemical characteristics as soil health indicators; we found that the maximum score for each studied parameter was achieved using conservation tillage strategies (Table 10 and Figure 4) indicating that conservation tillage pattern was the best management method for enhancing soil health
The results of this study indicated that it is possible to improve the soil hydraulic characteristics and soil water content through conservation tillage farming compared with conventional tillage
Summary
Cultivated soils in many semi-arid and dry regions, like the Dingxi Northern China zone, have low organic matter because of climatic limitations that affect net primary yield. One approach to increase crop yields whilst reducing natural resources and soil degradation in such environments is to adopt nutrient-landcrop-water management strategies that are jointly encompassed in the term conservation agriculture [1,2,3]. An improved understanding of the effect of conservation tillage measures on soil physicochemical properties is obligatory to manage and conserve soil under different soil management, soil type and climatic condition scenarios [5]. This information is most significant in semi-arid areas such as the northern China
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