Soil conservation tillage effects on yield and water use efficiency in on irrigated crops in Central Italy
Author(s)
Casa, Raffaele
Lo Cascio, Benedetto
Date Issued
2008
Type
Article
Abstract
Despite possible agronomic and environmental benefits, the diffusion of soil
conservation tillage systems in Italy is currently rather low. The aim of this
study was to compare the performance of different soil tillage techniques, in an
effort to identify suitable soil management options for irrigated crops in Central
Italy. An experiment was carried out on maize and soybean from April to
October in two consecutive years (1993 and 1994) in Maccarese (a coastal location
near Rome). The systems compared were: conventional mouldboard
ploughing (CT), minimum tillage, ridge tillage and no-tillage (NT). In 1993,
actual crop evapotranspiration was measured throughout the growing season
on NT and CT soybean, using a micrometeorological technique. No significant
differences due to soil tillage were found for grain yield and yield irrigation
water use efficiency (IWUEy), except for soybean in 1994, in which yields
and IWUEy were 59 % higher on conservation tillage treatments compared
with CT. In 1994 soybean yield water use efficiency was 10.1 and
9.5 kg ha)1 mm)1 for NT and CT respectively. The results suggest that the
adoption of soil conservation tillage is feasible, for the specific cropping system,
with equivalent or better performances as conventional tillage.
Additional information
L'articolo é disponibile sul sito dell'editore: http://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Citation
Casa R., Lo Cascio B., 2008. Soil conservation tillage effects on yield and water use efficiency in on irrigated crops in Central Italy. "Journal of Agronomy and Crop Science" 194(4): 310–319.
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Name
Casa&LoCascio,2007rev3-accept.pdf
Size
1.03 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
fb933d2896fbe8c681cd991824c21c8b