Published in Scientific Papers. Series A. Agronomy, Vol. LXV, Issue 1
Written by Olga VIZITIU, Irina CALCIU
The objective of our work is to present the results of a short-term study in which four different tillage types were tested in order to mitigate soil compaction. The experiment was conducted on a clay-loam soil located in Draganesti-Vlasca Agricultural Research Station in the year of 2018. The tillage variants tested were mouldboard ploughing, subsoiling and chiseling and the control variant was disking. Within each of the tested variants soil physical and chemical properties were determined in laboratory (e.g. saturated hydraulic conductivity, water stable aggregates, bulk density, penetration resistance, soil organic carbon and pH). The obtained results showed that the bulk density values were lower both in topsoil and subsoil in the variant with subsoiling tillage while in the control variant (2 times disking) the bulk density values were higher. The similar tendency was recorded for penetration resistance values. As for the water stable aggregates and saturated hydraulic conductivity, high values were also obtained in the variant where subsoiling was applied, whereas in the variants with mouldboard ploughing and chiseling similar values were obtained. Again, the control variant had the lowest values for both water stable aggregates and saturated hydraulic conductivity. The soil chemical properties did not vary significantly between the tested variants. The soil organic carbon varied between 2.06 and 2.34%, while the soil pH ranged between 5.99 and 6.63. The experimental study showed promising results for mitigating soil compaction by applying subsoiling. The most sensitive soil property to compaction due to tillage was found to be saturatedhydraulic conductivity. Soil chemical properties were not affected by different soil tillages.
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