TILLAGE MANAGEMENT EFFECTS ON PEA YIELD AND CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF PEA SEEDS

Abstract

Productivity of plants is determined by multiple factors that directly affect one another, therefore yield variability may be high and difficult to predict. Most often, however, a lower crop yield is achieved in the notillage system than in the ploughing system. An exact field experiment was undertaken to determine the yield and chemical composition of pea seeds sown under conditions of: 1) conventional tillage – CT (shallow ploughing and harrowing after the harvest of previous crop, pre-winter ploughing in winter); 2) reduced tillage – RT (stubble cultivator after the harvest of previous crop); and 3) herbicide tillage – HT (only glyphosate after the harvest of previous crop). A cultivation unit was applied on all plots in the springtime. Pea seed yield was higher by 14.1% in the CT than in the RT system and by 50.5% than in the HT system. The CT system was increasing the plant number m–2, number of pods and seeds m–2, seed mass per plant, and 1000 seeds mass, compared to the other systems. Protein content of seeds was at a similar level in all analyzed tillage systems, but was affected by the study year. In turn, the mineral composition of seeds was determined by both tillage system and study year. The seeds harvested from CT plots contained more phosphorus and iron, those from RT plots – more calcium and zinc, whereas those from HT plots – more phytate-P, potassium, magnesium, and copper, compared to the seeds from the other plots.