The “New Rotation” experiment was initiated in 1987 at Swift Current, Saskatchewan. The objectives were to evaluate, under conservation tillage management, the influence of crop and rotation type on crop productivity and grain quality, incidence of plant diseases and weed populations, a suite of soil and environmental parameters, economic performance and energy use efficiencies. The study provi...

Conservation tillage is expected to have a positive effect on soil physical properties, soil Carbon (C) storage, while reducing fuel, labour and machinery costs. However, reduced tillage could increase soil nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions and offset the expected gains from increased C sequestration. To date, conservation tillage is barely practiced or studied in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH). Here,...

Grain legumes convert atmospheric N2 to reactive N through symbiosis with N2-fixing rhizobia. Biological N2 fixation associated with legumes and the subsequent decomposition of legume residues are the primary processes that replenish N removed by harvest in agroecosystems without the addition of fertilizer N (Galloway et al., 1995, Peoples et al., 1995). Therefore, legumes are often included in...

In cold climates, snowmelt runoff often exceeds rainfall runoff during the year. Conservation tillage practices may be effective in reducing runoff during the cropping season but not during the snowmelt period. A plot study was conducted on a cropped hillslope to assess how tillage practices affect snowmelt runoff and the associated losses of sediment, phosphorus (P), and chemical oxygen demand...

Conservation tillage mitigates soil loss in cropland because plant residues help protect the soil, but effects on pesticide movement in surface runoff are not as straightforward. Effects of soil disturbance on surface runoff loss of chlorimuron and alachlor were evaluated utilizing runoff trays. Soil in the trays was either disturbed (tilled) and kept bare or was not tilled, and existing decomp...

Comprehensive assessment of the total greenhouse gas (GHG) budget of reduced tillage agricultural systems must consider emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4), each of which have higher global warming potentials than carbon dioxide (CO2). Tillage intensity may also impact nitric oxide (NO) emissions, which can have various environmental and agronomic impacts. In 2003 and 2004, we us...

Despite weeds are a serious threat to promotion of organic farming, relatively less attention is given to research on weed management. This article explores a scope of integration of conservation agriculture for weed control and soil protection under organic farming. Limitation in the use of agro-chemicals under OF promotes intensive tillage for weed control. Mostly, tillage leads to depletion ...

Lack of sufficient information on conservation tillage systems leads to the dominating use of conventional tillage practice in most parts of Iran. Testing other management practices may help in decision making regarding the types of tillage systems that reduce soil deterioration. A three- years field experiment was conducted to study the effects of conventional (CT), reduced (RT) and no-till (N...