Abstract
Tillage treatments have an important effect on soil microstructure characteristics, water thermal properties and nutrients, but little is known in the newly reclaimed cultivated land. For the reason, a long-term field study was to evaluate the tillage effects on soil physicochemical properties and crop yield in newly reclaimed cultivated land via the macroscopic and microscopic analysis. Three tillage treatments were tested: continuous conventional moldboard plow tillage (CT), sub-soiling/moldboard-tillage/sub-soiling tillage (ST) and no-tillage/sub-soiling/no-tillage (NT). Under CT, the microstructure was dominated by weakly separated plates structure and showed highest bulk density (BD) (1.49 g cm−3) and lowest soil organic matter (SOM) (3.68 g kg−1). In addition, CT reduced the capacity of soil moisture retention and temperature maintenance, resulting in aggregate structure deterioration and fragility. Unlike CT, the soil was characterized by moderately separated granular structure and highly separated aggregate structure under conservation tillage practice of ST and NT. NT was associated with the highest soil moisture content (20.42%), highest quantity of macroaggregates (> 0.25 mm) by wet-sieving (34.07%), and highest SOM (6.48 g kg−1) in the surface layer. Besides, NT was better able to regulate soil temperature and improved the values of geometric mean diameter. Under NT and ST, a stable soil structure with compound aggregates and pores was formed, and the maize yield was increased by 12.9% and 14.9% compared with CT, up to 8512.6 kg ha−1 and 8740.9 kg ha−1, respectively. These results demonstrated the positive effects of NT and ST on soil quality and crop yield in newly reclaimed cultivated land.
Highlights
Water thermal properties, soil nutrients and crop yield[9,10]
The sustainable tillage practice of soil in the newly reclaimed cultivated land is very important, yet few studies have compared the characteristics of newly reclaimed soil microstructure and physicochemical properties under different tillage treatments from a microscopic perspective, it is necessary to carry out further research about the improvement by different tillage treatments on the newly reclaimed cultivated land
Compared with conventional moldboard-tillage (CT), the distribution data of aggregates determined by the wetsieve method showed that NT significantly increased the proportion of > 0.25 mm aggregates, and decreased the proportion of < 0.25 mm aggregates (Fig. 3a, P < 0.05)
Summary
Previous studies have shown that some field engineering measures such as land leveling, cultivated land restructuring and irrigation and water conservancy construction play a certain role in improving soil q uality[11] These current measures mainly focus on the optimization of fertilization methods, the selection of soil mineral modifiers and land consolidation to improve newly reclaimed cultivated land soil quality. We hypothesized that conservation tillage practices with NT and straw mulching could influence soil physicochemical properties in newly reclaimed cultivated land, significantly increase soil water content and crop yields by improving soil structure and increasing soil organic matter content, thereby enhancing soil productivity. The research results will provide a theoretical basis for selecting suitable tillage measures for soil quality improvement in newly reclaimed cultivated land
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