Management to improve soil productivity and maximise lateral infiltration in permanent bed-furrow irrigation systems

Management to improve soil productivity and maximise lateral infiltration in permanent bed-furrow irrigation systems

The practice of conservation agriculture has been accepted for some time as conventional wisdom for improving soil conditions and raising the soil organic carbon levels of cropping land. This has been complemented over the past 10 years by controlled traffic agriculture, which has further improved soil management practices by almost eliminating compaction as a form of soil degradation.
Not withstanding the improved soil conditions that result from the practice of controlled traffic conservation agriculture, soils minimally tilled by such practices are still subject to consolidation through wetting and drying cycles. In this paper we report on a technique that further improves on these conservative soil management practices. This technique loosens soil at depth without any inversion,
and we examine the consequences this has on the proliferation and distribution of roots, the contents and
distributions of soil organic carbon and total soil nitrogen, the productivity of cropping soils and the lateral
infiltration of irrigation water in permanent bed-furrow systems. Results are drawn from experimental sites in Western Australia, Queensland and Pakistan.

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