Effects of Reduced Tillage on Dynamic Soil Properties and Winter Triticale Performance in Organic Farm at Wageningen, the Netherlands

Abstract

There is an increased need of identifying reduced tillage method that improves soil organic matter and soil fertility and at the same time best crop performance in organic farming. This study assessed the effects of organically managed reduced tillage and conventional tillage on dynamic soil properties and winter triticale performance. Organic farm that has been treated with three different tillage systems for six consecutive years was used in this study at Drovendaal organic facility of Wageningen University and Research. The tillage systems included two reduced tillage NIT at 10 cm and ECO up to 20 cm deep and CON at a depth of 30 cm. The parameters evaluated are soil physico-chemical properties, leaf area index (LAI), plant dry matter, ear number per area, plant height and chlorophyll content (SPAD) at ear formation stage . Use of NIT led to higher SOM and N-NO3 of 13.03 mg kg-1 at 0-10 cm soil depth. Also, shallow soil depths had lower bulk density and penetration resistance compared to deeper depths but NIT had higher penetration resistance in all soil depths compared to ECO and CON. Based on crop performance, ECO and CON revealed a better crop performance than NIT. Therefore, ECO having intermediate potentials in soil properties and crop performance could be the right tillage system for organic crop production compared to NIT and CON. Moreover, ECO will be a suitable tillage system that improves soil fertility, mitigates greenhouse gases and at the same time influence high crop performance.