Impact of sustainable tillage technologies on soil biological conditions, faba bean crop productivity and quality parameters

Abstract

Sustainable tillage technologies become widespread more and more last years. Decrease in primary tillage intensity results higher agroecological level but might limit productivity of crops. For this reason, a long-term (since 1988) field experiment has been performed at the Experimental Station of the Vytautas Magnus University, Agriculture Academy (formally Aleksandras Stulginskis University, 54º N, 23º E). The aim of the experiment was to establish the influence of reduced primary tillage systems on soil biological conditions, faba bean productivity and quality parameters. Five sustainable tillage technologies were investigated: conventional deep (22-25 cm) and shallow (12-15 cm) mouldboard ploughing, deep chiselling (22-25 cm), shallow disking (12-15 cm) and no-tillage. It turned out that most earthworms were found in untreated plots. The largest biomass of earthworms was also found here. According to average data, the number of earthworms in untreated plots was about 60%, and biomass more than 3 times higher than in deeply ploughed plots. By replacing deep soil ploughing with other alternatives, soil enzyme activity increased. Essentially, the highest enzyme activity was found on untreated plots. The activity of saccharase was 0.7-2.0 and urease - about 3-4 times higher than in the deeply ploughed plots. Different soil tillage technologies generally did not have a significant effect on the density of the faba bean crop, the number of pods, and the number of grains in the pod and the weight of the 1000 grain at the end of the vegetation. At the end of the vegetation, the dry biomass yield of the faba beans was more dependent on the meteorological conditions of vegetation than on the soil tillage technologies.