Soil Physical Quality of Citrus Orchards Under Tillage, Herbicide, and Organic Managements

Abstract

Soil capacity to support life and to produce economic goods and services is strongly linked to the maintenance of good soil physical quality (SPQ). In this study, the SPQ of citrus orchards was assessed under three different soil managements, namely no-tillage using herbicides, tillage under chemical farming, and no-tillage under organic farming. Commonly used indicators, such as soil bulk density, organic carbon content, and structural stability index, were considered in conjunction with capacitive indicators estimated by the Beerkan estimation of soil transfer parameter (BEST) method. The measurements taken at the L'Alcoleja Experimental Station in Spain yielded optimal values for soil bulk density and organic carbon content in 100% and 70% of cases for organic farming. The values of structural stability index indicated that the soil was stable in 90% of cases. Differences between the soil management practices were particularly clear in terms of plant-available water capacity and saturated hydraulic conductivity. Under organic farming, the soil had the greatest ability to store and provide water to plant roots, and to quickly drain excess water and facilitate root proliferation. Management practices adopted under organic farming (such as vegetation cover between the trees, chipping after pruning, and spreading the chips on the soil surface) improved the SPQ. Conversely, the conventional management strategies unequivocally led to soil degradation owing to the loss of organic matter, soil compaction, and reduced structural stability. The results in this study show that organic farming has a clear positive impact on the SPQ, suggesting that tillage and herbicide treatments should be avoided.

Long-term organic farming on a citrus plantation results in soil organic carbon recovery

“…The soil in the top layer that was tilled for millennia is slightly compacted. This is also clearly observed in fields that are under no-tillage practice in combination with the use of herbicides (Di Prima et al, 2018). Here the bulk density increased, causing much lower infiltration capacity and higher runoff and erosion (Keesstra et al, 2016b).…”

“…However, due to intensive production over centuries, most soils are depleted in natural organic matter Montanaro et al, 2017;Novara et al, 2017). The current citrus production in Eastern Spain is modern, technical and uses large inputs of agrochemicals, and induce high erosion rates (Cerdà et al, 2009) and low infiltration rates (Di Prima et al, 2018). These systems need strategies to reduce the soil losses (Cerdà et al, 2018b(Cerdà et al, , 2018cKeesstra et al, 2019) and improve soil quality (Hondebrink et al, 2017).…”

Spatial Variability of Soil Physical and Hydraulic Properties in a Durum Wheat Field: An Assessment by the BEST-Procedure

“…Therefore, BEST can be considered an adequate compromise between estimation accuracy and economic-experimental load. For example, some studies have applied BEST to establish the effects of droplet impact on soil sealing and crust formation [24,25], to carry out integrated soil physical quality assessment [26,27] or to identify the effects of tillage on some soil properties (i.e., Ks) under drip irrigation [28]. A main advantage of BEST is that it can be adopted when a large number of hydraulic measurements must be obtained at the field or at irrigation district scale, for example, for precision agriculture purposes.…”

Comparing Transient and Steady-State Analysis of Single-Ring Infiltrometer Data for an Abandoned Field Affected by Fire in Eastern Spain

“…The cores were used to determine the soil bulk density, ρ b (g·cm −3 ), and the initial volumetric soil water content, θ i (m 3 ·m −3 ). According to other investigations, the saturated soil water content, θ s (m 3 ·m −3 ), was approximated by total soil porosity, determined from bulk density ρ b (e.g., [28,37,[43][44][45][46][47][48]). Soil organic matter was determined by the Walkley-Black [49] method.…”