Tillage Versus No-Tillage. Soil Properties and Hydrology in an Organic Persimmon Farm in Eastern Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

There is an urgent need to implement environmentally friendly agriculture management practices to achieve the Sustainable Goals for Development (SDGs) of the United Nations by 2030. Mediterranean agriculture is characterized by intense and millennia-old tillage management and as a consequence degraded soil. No-Tillage has been widely examined as a solution for soil degradation but No-Tillage relies more on the application of herbicides that reduce plant cover, which in turn enhances soil erosion. However, No-Tillage with weed cover should be researched to promote organic farming and sustainable agriculture. Therefore, we compare Tillage against No-Tillage using weed cover as an alternative strategy to reduce soil losses in persimmon plantations, both of them under organic farming management. To achieve these goals, two plots were established at “La Canyadeta” experimental station on 25-years old Persimmon plantations, which are managed with Tillage and No-Tillage for 3 years. A survey of the soil cover, soil properties, runoff generation and initial soil losses using rainfall simulation experiments at 55 mm h−1 in 0.25 m2 plot was carried out. Soils under Tillage are bare (96.7%) in comparison to the No-Tillage (16.17% bare soil), with similar organic matter (1.71 vs. 1.88%) and with lower bulk densities (1.23 vs. 1.37 g cm3). Tillage induces faster ponding (60 vs. 92 s), runoff (90 vs. 320 s) and runoff outlet (200 vs. 70 s). The runoff discharge was 5.57 times higher in the Tillage plots, 8.64 for sediment concentration and 48.4 for soil losses. We conclude that No-tillage shifted the fate of the tilled field after 3 years with the use of weeds as a soil cover conservation strategy. This immediate effect of No-Tillage under organic farming conditions is very promising to achieve the SDGs.

Vicia sativa Roth. Can Reduce Soil and Water Losses in Recently Planted Vineyards (Vitis vinifera L.)

“…The findings of previous researchers show that when the runoff is high the soil losses are high (Hofmann and Ries 1991;Gardner and Gerrard 2003). Those findings were found under natural rainfall at different plot sizes and rainfall simulation experiments in the field (Martínez-Casasnovas and Concepcion Ramos 2009;Novara et al 2013;Cerdà et al 2020) or under laboratory conditions (Mamedov and Levy 2019). Figure 5 demonstrates these relationships per year and also in the whole set of data.…”

“…The experimental setup for the rainfall simulation experiments was identical than for the soil sampling. Ten plots per management (10 Tillage and 10 Vicia sativa) by four seasons (February 2016 and August 2016, 2017 and 2018) were used to carry out a total of 80 rainfall simulation experiments at 55 mm h −1 rainfall intensity for one hour on circular paired plots (0.25 m 2 ) (Cerdà et al 2020). For more detailed information about this rainfall simulator, the readers can visit the previous articles published by Cerdà (1997), Cerdà et al (1997).…”

“…This confirms the damage which tillage induces in the soil system such as Rasmussen (1999) found in his review in Scandinavia. The negative impact of tillage on soil biology, structure and chemical properties is not a new finding (Doran 1980) that is being revisited due to the lack of proper information (Blanco-Canqui and Ruis 2018; Biberdzic et al 2020;Cerdà et al 2020) and the lack of long-term monitoring (Hungria et al 2009;Cerdà et al 2018b;Piazza et al 2020;Klik and Rosner 2020).…”

Multivariate Analysis for Assessing Irrigation Water Quality: A Case Study of the Bahr Mouise Canal, Eastern Nile Delta

“…Higher Na + and SAR values would lead to soil permeability problems. High SAR levels in irrigation water can cause soil problems such as soil surface crust formation, poor drainage, and poor soil tilth [80,91,95,96]. An excess of HCO 3 − concentration in irrigation water negatively affects the plant uptake and metabolism of nutrients.…”

Head-cut gully erosion susceptibility modelling based on ensemble Random Forest with oblique decision trees in Fareghan watershed, Iran

“…In one way, many gullies are related to the geological conditions (Beavis 2000) and the climatic constrains (Luffman and Nandi 2020), but the land management is relevant such as has been seen in agricultural land (De Santisteban et al 2006). Agricultural land is a source of sediments as a consequence of the mismanagement of the plant cover due to the use of intense tillage and herbicides (Cerd a et al 2020). Intense soil erosion rates result in the loss of ecosystem services (Sannigrahi et al 2019) and gully erosion threat the sustainability of the soil system.…”