The conversion from conventional tillage (CT) to no-tillage (NT) of the soil is often suggested for positive long-term effects on several physical and hydraulic soil properties. In fact, although shortly after the conversion a worsening of the soil may occur, this transition should evolve in a progressive improvement of soil properties. Therefore, investigations aiming at evaluating the effects of NT on porous media are advisable, since such information may be relevant to better address the farmers’ choices to this specific soil conservation management strategy. In this investigation, innovative and standard methods were applied to compare CT and NT on two farms where the conversion took place 6 or 24 years ago, respectively. Regardless of the investigated farm, results showed negligible differences in cumulative infiltration or infiltration rate, soil sorptivity, saturated hydraulic conductivity, conductive pores size, or hydraulic conductivity functions. Since relatively small discrepancies were also highlighted in terms of bulk density or soil organic carbon, it was possible to conclude that NT did not have a negative impact on the main physical and hydraulic properties of investigated clay soils. However, a significantly higher number of small pores was detected under long-term NT compared to CT, so we concluded that the former soil was a more conductive pore system, i.e., consisting of numerous relatively smaller pores but continuous and better interconnected. Based on measured capacity-based indicators (macroporosity, air capacity, relative field capacity, plant available water capacity), NT always showed a more appropriate proportion of water and air in the soil.
The availability of big data in agriculture, enhanced by free remote sensing data and on-board sensor-based data, provides an opportunity to understand within-field and year-to-year variability and promote precision farming practices for site-specific management. This paper explores the performance in durum wheat yield estimation using different technologies and data processing methods. A state-of-the-art data cleaning technique has been applied to data from a yield monitoring system, giving a good agreement between yield monitoring data and hand sampled data. The potential use of Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 images in precision agriculture for within-field production variability is then assessed, and the optimal time for remote sensing to relate to durum wheat yield is also explored. Comparison of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index(NDVI) with yield monitoring data reveals significant and highly positive linear relationships (r ranging from 0.54 to 0.74) explaining most within-field variability for all the images acquired between March and April. Remote sensing data analyzed with these methods could be used to assess durum wheat yield and above all to depict spatial variability in order to adopt site-specific management and improve productivity, save time and provide a potential alternative to traditional farming practices.
Biomass sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) is a crop that can be used for energy production in the bioethanol chain and a greater knowledge of its potential and response to irrigation water levels could help to assess its potential diffusion in Mediterranean areas. A twoyear field experiment was carried out in Southern Italy; two irrigation regimes were compared in biomass sorghum, optimal watered (irrigation supplies greater than actual crop evapotranspiration, ETc) and stressed watered (about 65% of the optimal one). Growth analysis, soil water content and aboveground dry biomass (ADM) yield at harvest were measured and analyzed. Radiation use efficiency (RUE), irrigation (IWUE) and water use efficiencies (WUE) were also calculated. Seasonal water use ranged from 830 mm in the optimal treatment to 589 mm in the stressed one. Similarly, ADM proved to be statistically different between the two irrigation treatments (34.6 vs 19.8 t of dry matter ha -1 ). The RUE, calculated as the slope of the first order equation between dry biomass and intercepted photosynthetically active radiation along a crop cycle, showed an average of 2.84±0.65 g MJ -1 . No statistical differences for IWUE and WUE were obtained between irrigation regimes (8.22 and 5.87 kg m -3 , on average). The two years of experiment influenced IWUE and WUE (both larger in the rainier growing season), but not the RUE. The high RUE and WUE obtained values confirmed that biomass sorghum is a crop with considerable dry matter production efficiency. The experimental results suggest that the introduction of biomass sorghum in the cropping systems of Mediterranean environments as an alternative crop for energy purposes is feasible, but requires an adequate seasonal irrigation water supply (not less than 500 mm).
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