Abstract:
Soil tillage is an important factor affecting soil fertility properties and crop yield. Tillage impact certain soil physical and chemical properties such as bulk density, soil porosity and water-holding capacity, infiltration rates, hydraulic conductivity, soil temperature, soil organic carbon, pH, CEC, available nitrogen, phosphorus and exchangeable potassium amongst others. The main objective of the present work was to compare the effect of no-tillage systems and the conventional tillage systems. Tillage systems can be generally categorized into plow tillage (conventional tillage), reduced tillage using chisel plow, disc plow, harrow disc or cultivators and no-till systems. Conservation tillage and its various types generally improve the soil quality indicators including soil organic carbon (SOC) storage. Whereas, conventional tillage practices give birth to a finer and loose-setting soil structure with a modified soil bulk density and soil moisture content, hence, causing loss of soil organic carbon and deterioration in other soil properties. Generally, soil fertility properties are more favourable with no-till than tillage-based systems. However, some researchers observed no significant effect of tillage methods (no-tillage and plow till) on bulk density (BD), pH and total porosity, while others found otherwise. The magnitude of these discrepancies could be due to the differences in crop species, soil properties, climatic characteristics and their complex interactions as well as tillage system adopted. |
