In rice (Oryza sativa L.) culture the effect of puddling (wet tillage) on puddle quality, weed growth and yield of crop depends upon initial soil manipulations by pre-puddling tillage. However, the role of pre-puddling tillage on these aspects has not been studied adequately. These effects were studied for three years (1994±1996) in a ®eld experiment with a rice±wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cro...

The adoption of no tillage (NT) in crop production has been encouraged primarily due to its more significant benefits to the environment compared with other conservation tillage systems. There are nevertheless concerns about NT corn (Zea mays L.) performance from both shortand long-term perspectives. This study was conducted near Burlington, Nashua, Newell, Sutherland, and Crawfordsville in Iow...

In this study, a fixed-site field experiment was conducted to study the influence of different combinations of tillage and straw incorporation management on carbon storage in different-sized soil aggregates and on crop yield after three years of rice-wheat rotation. Compared to conventional tillage, the percentages of >2 mm macroaggregates and water-stable macroaggregates in rice-wheat double-c...

Maintenance and improvement of soil quality in continuous cropping systems is critical to sustaining agricultural productivity and environmental quality for future generations. This review focuses on lessons learned from long-term continuous cropping experiments. Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the most often reported attribute from long-term studies and is chosen as the most important indicator o...

Long-term tillage negatively affects soil aggregation, but little is known about the short-term effects of tillage. We investigated the effects of intensive tillage (moldboard plowing) and conservation tillage (chisel plowing) on aggregate breakage during tillage in a long-term study located in the semiarid Ebro river valley (NE Spain). The type of tillage resulted in different soil aggregate d...

John R. Teasdale is a plant physiologist at the Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Beltsville, Maryland. N o-tillage cropping systems are known to provide many benefits to soils that can enhance production of grain crops. Many of the improvements to soils that result from no-tillage production such as increases in soil aggregation, water-holding cap...