Residual Fertility in Soil Continuously Field Cropped to Corn by Conventional Tillage and No-Tillage Methods
1975
Moschler, W. W. | Martens, D. C. | Shear, G. M.
The increasing importance of no-tillage crop culture merits investigation of its many aspects. Reports to date on no-tillage corn (Zea mays L.) fertilization or liming have not fully clarified the requirements, especially with respect to effective utilization of the nutrient elements, which must necessarily include residual supplies left in the soil. This paper reports comparative residual nutrient elements in the 0 to 20, and 20 to 40 cm soil layers after 11 consecutive years of corn grown in the field by no-tillage and conventional tillage methods. Corn grown by both methods had received the same amounts of calcitic limestone and fertilizer. The data on residual fertility were obtained by repeated greenhouse cropping without lime or fertilizer, followed by testing the soil for pH and acid-extractable nutrient elements. Greenhouse recovery of residual nutrient elements, coupled with residual soil supplies, were used to draw conclusions. Considerably more P and slightly more N were recovered in the greenhouse corn at the 0 to 20 cm soil depth when no-tillage corn had been grown than where conventionally tilled soil had been grown. Acid extractable P and Ca, after greenhouse cropping, were higher in no-tillage soil than in conventionally tilled soil.
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