Effect of Tillage Machinery Traffic on Soil Properties, Corn Root Development and Plant Growth

Tillage traffic is one of the major problems facing modern agriculture. Overuse of machinery, intensive cropping, and short crop rotations, intensive grazing and inappropriate soil management leads to soil compaction. This experiment was conducted on a clay loam soil to study the effect of til lage machinery traffic (TMT) on soil properties, corn root development and plant growth. Tillage machinery (TM) used in experiment was wheel tractor (TW), crawler tractor (TC), and a no compaction (C). The results showed highly significant differences bet ween treatments. The data on final emergence count did not show significant differences between treatment means when tested at P≤0.05 levels. However, plant height showed significant differences at P≤0.05 and P≤0.01 levels when they were measured at 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 weeks and at the time of harvest. The TW1, TW2, and TW3 produced taller plants than TC1, TC2 and TC3. The data on root length and density showed significant differences between treatment means at P ≤0.05 and P≤0.01 levels, with TW1 and TW2 produced the best results while TC3 showed the lowest results. The machinery passes (MP) significantly influenced growth parameters and gave lower dry matter yield and the other yield components. The soil bulk density, soil resistance, and soil moisture generally increased under machinery passes except under TC3 and TW3 treatments which showed the lowest performance.

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