Recent developments in biofuel demand and the rapid adoption of modern transgenic hybrids are changing production systems towards more corn after corn, more intensive tillage, higher plant populations, and ever higher crop residue levels at harvest. Meeting society’s needs for food, feed, and fuel from grain corn, and in the future from corn stover, requires continued refinement of tillage syst...

The weed seed bank of a long-term tillage study in subarctic Alaska was studied at the end of 10 years of continuous spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). Tillage treatments were: no-till, disked once (spring), disked twice (spring and fall), and chisel plow (fall). Soil cores were obtained from each tillage treatment and seeds were manually separated from soil after washing through sieves. Tilla...

Despite the obvious importance of roots to agro-ecosystem functioning, few studies have attempted to examine the effects of warming on root biomass and distribution, especially under different tillage systems. In this study, we performed a field warming experiment using infrared heaters on winter wheat, in long-term conventional tillage and no-tillage plots, to determine the responses of root b...

A number of economic and environmental benefits are associated with the use of no-till in production agriculture in the United States. There are lower labor, energy, and machinery costs associated with no-till farming relative to conventional tillage systems and other types of conservation tillage. Reduced erosion and runoff associated with no-till also lead to a number of environmental benefit...

Decisions about reducing agricultural land tillage to offset global warming potential (GWP) are based on the evaluation of the agricultural eco-system and the profitability to local farms. Carbon sequestration and nitrous oxide emissions from winter wheat (WW) cropping were evaluated by modeling typical dryland cropping systems in eastern Washington. Variations in rainfall, tillage intensity an...

Corn acreage has increased in recent years in Louisiana. Much of this is on mixed to heavy Mississippi River alluvial soils and to a lesser extent on loessial silt loams of the Macon Ridge. Each of these soil groups are unique in their phys­ ical and chemical characteristics and different management strategies may be required to produce optimal yield. Research has indicated that corn performs b...

Crop growth models can be useful tools in evaluating the impacts of di€erent tillage systems on the growth and ®nal yield of crops. A tillage model was incorporated into CROPGRO-Soybean and tested for conditions in Ames, IA, USA. Predictions of changes in surface residue, bulk density, hydraulic conductivity, runo€ curve number, and surface albedo were consistent with expected behaviors of thes...

in order to evaluate the effects of convention and conservation (no-tillage and reduced tillage) tillage methods on wheat and chickpea yield and yield components and soil physical properties under rainfed conditions in kermanshah (n: 34°19', e: 47°17'), some experiments were performed in sararood dryland agricultural research station during three cropping seasons (2011-2014). in the f...