Dear Dr. Kalra, continuous preparation of land by shallow tillage for rice-based cropping system has been found to help development of a hard/impervious soil layer at 15 cm depth. In lowland ricefields of Korea, continuous practice of minimum tillage (rototilling and puddling of surface soil by small power tiller) for land preparation reduced the thickness of plough-layer (from 19-20 to 13-14 cm), depth of root zone (from 36-37 to 25-26 cm), increased penetration resistance of soil by about 50% (from 4.2-5.8 to 5.6-9.0 kg/cm2) and reduced rice grain yield by about 40%. Yield and N uptake of lowland rice in a Typic Haplustalf of Palampur (India), significantly increased with tillage depth. You may read the following papers for the references: DK Kundu and JK Ladha (1995) Soil Biol. Biochem. 27:431-439; DK Kundu and JK Ladha (1999) Nutrient Cycling Agroecosystems 53:19-33; DK Kundu (2014) J. Ind. Soc. Soil Sci. 62(S):143-154.

Please have a look at these links and PDF attachment for said query.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265972134_Effect_of_Tillage_Practices_on_Soil_Properties_and_Crop_Productivity_in_Wheat-Mungbean-Rice_Cropping_System_under_Subtropical_Climatic_Conditions

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291386372_Effects_of_conservation_agriculture_on_crop_productivity_and_water-use_efficiency_under_an_irrigated_pigeonpea-wheat_cropping_system_in_the_western_Indo-Gangetic_Plains

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095633915300630

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Short-and_long-term_consequences_of_zero_minimum_tillage_on_crops_productivity_and_soil_environment

Good Luck

Article Effect of Tillage Practices on Soil Properties and Crop Prod...

Article Effects of conservation agriculture on crop productivity and...

Short term indicators include soil microbial biomass and medium indicators include soil light fraction, long term indicators soil organic matter/carbon among other chemical, physical and biological characteristics. There are numerous papers out on soil quality and what indicators are best to use for determining soil quality.

Reduced tillage, traffic control and stubble retention are increasing wheat yields in Australia's dry climatic zones.   Poor nutrient distribution is an emerging issue.

First is required to understand terms, Zero tillage mean no tillage, it is use only in highly sandy soils and minimum tillage is a practics in which. We destry the seasonal weeds, those weed may not destroyed in zero tillage due to leaving soil cover and there weeds are normaly controlled by handpulling keeping qaulity betterments. No doubt health detoriates some time when weeds cause insect pest, living and replication. Soil health destroy in case when u are mini or deep plouging in sensitive soil, like leaching nutritns, erosion etc. Quantification is that only mini and zero tillage apply according to soil conditions. Mini tillage Once in a season for controlling weeds in 6 month crop and then control weeds through weedicides and handpuling. 

There is no doubt that long-term no-tillage have a significant role in improving soil quality, soil health and environmental sustainability. However, Short term no-tillage

Thanks Dr Kashif for  providing valuable papers on this aspect, but quantification of tillage induced soil properties change is much needed. The response couls be contrasting depending upon the soil types, crops/cropping systems, different production environments or agro-ecologies and we have to quantify the factors responsible for the differences, otherwise the debate of positive/negative effects will go on for a very long time.

thanks again for the info

regards

Dear Dr. Kalra

We conducted field experiments and results are given below: Conservation tillage and residue management are the options for enhancing soil organic carbon

stabilization by improving soil aggregation in tropical soils. We studied the influence of different combinations of tillage and residue management on carbon stabilization in different sized soil aggregates and also on crop yield after 5 years of continuous rice–wheat cropping system on a sandy loam reclaimed sodic soil of north India. Compared to conventional tillage, water stable macroaggregates

in conservation tillage (reduced and zero-tillage) in wheat coupled with direct seeded rice (DSR) was increased by 50.13% and water stable microaggregates of the later decreased by 10.1% in surface soil. Residue incorporation caused a significant increment of 15.65% in total water stable aggregates in

surface soil (0–15 cm) and 7.53% in sub-surface soil (15–30 cm). In surface soil, the maximum (19.2%) and minimum (8.9%) proportion of total aggregated carbon was retained with >2 mm and 0.1–0.05 mm size fractions, respectively. DSR combined with zero tillage in wheat along with residue retention (T6)

had the highest capability to hold the organic carbon in surface (11.57 g kg1 soil aggregates) with the highest stratification ratio of SOC (1.5). Moreover, it could show the highest carbon preservation capacity (CPC) of coarse macro and mesoaggregates. A considerable proportion of the total SOC was found to be

captured by the macroaggregates (>2–0.25 mm) under both surface (67.1%) and sub-surface layers (66.7%) leaving rest amount in microaggregates and ‘silt + clay’ sized particles. From our study, it has been proved that DSR with zero tillage in wheat (with residue) treatment (T6) has the highest potential to secure sustainable yield increment (8.3%) and good soil health by improving soil aggregation (53.8%) and SOC sequestration (33.6%) with respect to the conventional tillage with transplanted rice (T1) after five years of continuous rice–wheat cropping in sandy loam reclaimed sodic soil of hot semi-arid Indian subcontinent.

The grand daddy of North American no till trial is an experiment started at the Ohio State University in the early 1960's and Rattan Lal has been associated with it.

Of late. Puget and Lal put the sequestration from the change to no till at about 330 kg C per ha per year. 

Practices such as green manuring can work to multiple that effect and even greater effects can result from the use of compost and biochar potentially. A suite of practices will be needed to get the most powerful effects to optimize soil organic matter levels so critical for soil health. 

Soil health is a function of acidity and toxicity and the use of synthetic chemistry in the form of herbicides, insecticides and ammoniated fertilizer can work to compromise the soil biology which is critical to the recycling of beneficial material into the soil. In many monocultural input based systems of no till the use of these inputs rise along with their side effects which are largely negative effects.

In addition there is reason and justification to invert and till soil such as overcoming the acidity and subsoil compaction that cannot be implemented with a completely no till approach.  

While biologically based agriculture can play a huge role in counteracting issues with soil health and even greenhouse gases the role of no till is a tool in a tool box but not a solution to most pressing issues affecting world agriculture.

Indeed when they are associated with increased use of synthetic chemistry and as such they may be more the problem than the solution. 

 Please see our pubpication on "Tillage and residue management effects on soil aggregation, organic carbon dynamics and yield attribute in rice–wheat cropping system under reclaimed sodic soil". Soil & Tillage Research. 2014, 136:76-83.

Thank you Sharma.

Hello,

You can consult information on this website (http://www.aapresid.org.ar/), is the Argentine Association of Producers in non-tillage (equal to zero tillage). In Argentina many works were done evaluating the benefits of the no tillage, you can consult in this web (http://inta.gob.ar/).

The models that can be used to evaluate the effects of zero tillage in the long term can be Cropsyst, Cycle, or C-Farm. You can check with this researcher ([email protected]).

I think a grand daddy of long term zero tillage is the Ohio State No Till maize experiment. The Puget and Lal quantified C increase in this straight maize no till at 330 kg/ha C per year. It is estimated if all arable land was put into no till it might counteract 10% of the current fossil fuel emissions of greenhouse gases. Yet the use of cover crop would double or triple the no till effect and the use of compost can double or triple that of cover crops and mixed grazing and cropping can 2 or 3 that capacity and biochar can 2 or 3 that. My point is that our agriculture system adequately designed and develop can completely reverse the current emissions of fossil fuel emissions without need for draconian reduction of emissions. I believe our prudent course is to continue to work on emissions but the big ticket is not emission reduction but optimizing sequestration through our agriculture and food systems. Reversing climate change will take time but is imminently possible and needed. 

Soil organic carbon and nitrogen in a Mollisol in central Ohio as affected by tillage and land use

P. Puget,

R. Lal,

Abstract

Minimum tillage practices are known for increasing soil organic carbon (SOC). However, not all environmental situations may manifest this potential change. The SOC and N stocks were assessed on a Mollisol in central Ohio in an 8-year-old tillage experiment as well as under two relatively undisturbed land uses; a secondary forest and a pasture on the same soil type. Cropped systems had 51±4 (equiv. mass) Mg ha−1 lower SOC and lower 3.5±0.3 (equiv. mass) Mg ha−1 N in the top 30 cm soil layer than under forest. Being a secondary forest, the loss in SOC and N stocks by cultivation may have been even more than these reported herein. No differences among systems were detected below this depth. The SOC stock in the pasture treatment was 29±3 Mg ha−1 greater in the top 10 cm layer than in cultivated soils, but was similar to those under forest and no-till (NT). Among tillage practices (plow, chisel and NT) only the 0–5 cm soil layer under NT exhibited higher SOC and N concentrations. An analysis of the literature of NT effect on SOC stocks, using meta-analysis, suggested that NT would have an overall positive effect on SOC sequestration rate but with a greater variability of what was previously reported. The average sequestration rate of NT was 330 kg SOC ha−1 year−1 with a 95% confidence interval ranging from 47 to 620 kg SOC ha−1 year−1. There was no effect of soil texture or crop rotation on the SOC sequestration rate that could explain this variability. The conversion factor for SOC stock changes from plow to NT was equal to 1.04. This suggests that the complex mechanisms and pathways of SOC accrual warrant a cautious approach when generalizing the beneficial changes of NT on SOC stocks.

Keywords

Soil carbon sequestration;

Nitrogen stock;

No till;

Pasture;

Forest;

Meta-analysis;

Soil quality;

Conservation tillage