Increased CO2 release from soils resulting from agricultural practices such as tillage has generated concerns about contributions to global warming. Maintaining current levels of soil C and/or sequestering additional C in soils are important mechanisms to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere through production agriculture. We conducted a study in northern Alabama from 2003 to 2006 to measure CO2 efflux...

Soil N2O emissions from three corn (Zea mays L.)-soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] systems in central Iowa were measured from the spring of 2003 through February 2005. The three managements systems evaluated were full-width tillage (fall chisel plow, spring disk), no-till, and no-till with a rye (Secale cereale L. 'Rymin') winter cover crop. Four replicate plots of each treatment were establishe...

Conservation tillage systems provide optimum conditions to reduce soil erosion and increase surface soil organic matter. This experiment was established with the longterm goal of developing conservation tillage systems that use either chemical inputs to produce vegetables and control pests, or legume cover crops, biological pesticides, and tillage to provide plant nutrition and control pests. T...

This work was aimed at assessing whether in silage maize it is possible to replace precisionplanting with a volumetric seeding in the perspective of developing hybrid machines to strip tilland sow both high density crops like winter cereals and low density crops like maize. This inorder to reduce the number of machines in the farm, simplify logistics and reduce amortizationcosts. Two experiment...

Despite being one of the most pro®table crops for the southeastern USA, cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) is considered to create a greater soil erosion hazard than other annual crops such as corn (Zea mays L.) and soybeans (Glycine max (L.) Merr.). Reduced tillage systems and cover cropping can reduce soil erosion and leaching of nutrients into ground water. The objectives of this study, which wa...

Soils play a key role in the global carbon cycle. They can be a source or a sink of carbon and in ̄uence CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. In order to calculate the carbon budget of a region, the effect of soil management practices on carbon sequestration in soils needs to be quanti®ed. Objectives of this experiment were to determine: (i) the effects of ridge till, plow till and no-till on t...

Tillage can alter the soil habitats wherein many insect pests and their natural enemies reside during at least part of life cycle. To enhance crop productivity reduce climate change effects, conservation agriculture (CA) with reduced-tillage or no-tillage practices have been advocated to farmers. However, information relating effect CA on is very scarce, in Indo-Gangetic region. In this study, ...

Effects of six tillage practices on some soil microbiological properties and crop yields were evaluated for a clay soil (Typic Haploxererts) under semi-arid Mediterranean conditions in a three year study (2006-2009). The experiment was designed as a completely randomized-block with three replications. Treatments were: conventional tillage with residue incorporated (CT1), conventional tillage wi...