Effect of the Conservative Agriculture System on Some Physical Properties of the Soil

George Cizmaș, Elena Partal, Mihaela Șerban, Gheorghe Măturaru

National Agricultural Research and Development Institute Fundulea

Keywords: conservative agriculture, no-till, distribution of soil aggregates, water stability of soil aggregates.

Abstract: Conservative agriculture provides by direct sowing and soil mulching an alternative to the conventional farming system in which intensive tillage can lead to soil deterioration in the face of climatic factors in the context of climate change. The presented results were obtained at NARDI Fundulea for autumn wheat and corn crops, during 2 years (2020-2021). The distribution of soil aggregates in dry sieving may indicate resistance to wind erosion of the soil. Water stability of soil aggregates in wet sieving has been proposed as a method of measuring the stability of soil aggregates against water erosion.

In both 2020 and 2021, in the case of autumn wheat cultivation, the tillage has significantly higher values of the average diameter of the soil aggregates at the dry sieving in the variant sown directly compared to that worked with the chisel, registering values by 22.7% and 11.1% higher. The influence of soil work on the distribution of soil aggregates in dry sieving in maize cultivation is significant for 2020 and 2021. The average diameter of soil aggregates in the experimental version with uncultivated soil is about 25.6% higher than chisel in 2020. Diameter of the average soil aggregates in dry sieving, the experimental variant with uncultivated soil is approximately 24.2% higher than in the soil worked with chisel in 2021. The influence of crop rotation, soil tillage and plant residue management on the water stability of aggregates in both crops studied recorded insignificant values in both years studied.