Crop Residues Distribution After Tillage Operations Under Controlled And Random Traffic Technology

Abstract

Controlled traffic farming is a technology used to avoid soil compaction introduced by field machinery load and traffic. The benefits in improved soil conditions and yield increase were shown in Australia, the US and some parts of Europe. The use of permanent tramlines for every field operation was considered as a barrier to implementation in some parts of Europe. This was mainly due to fear from tillage quality in terms of crop residues distribution. The paper reports the results of the two-year assessment of the technology compared to traditional random traffic treatments in field scale experiments. The spring barley and oilseed rape crops were grown. Measurements were taken after the stubble breaking tillage operation with the Lemken disc harrows. Image analysis was used to calculate the distribution of crop residues. Results showed that the use of permanent tramlines has no negative influence on crop residues distribution.

Jerusalem Artichoke as a Means of Fields Conservation

“…The Jerusalem artichoke is able to fully survive on fields with weeds such as couch-grass, sow thistle, cyclorama and others. When this plant is used for remediation of soils, the costs of other necessary technology is significantly reduced and simultaneously, the useless soil is turned into a land fit for agricultural use (Simakov and Starovoytov, 2007;Kays, 1985;Kays and Kultur, 2005;Macák et al, 2015). Usanova and Pavlov (2016) researched the possibility of using the Jerusalem artichoke as ameliorant in acid rain contaminated sod-podzolic soil.…”