Physical soil properties of conventional tillage and no-tillage, in crop rotation and succession, compared with natural pasture

In soils with naturally favorable characteristics for cultivation, conventional tillage degrades the physical soil properties, since this management system causes the rupture of aggregates, soil compaction, and eliminates soil cover. No-tillage, on the other hand, maintains soil cover and improves physical properties, but consolidates the surface layer. Our study was conducted on a Haplumbrept soil, from May 1995 to April 2001. Five soil tillage treatments were used: conventional tillage crop rotation (CTR), conventional tillage crop succession (CTS), no-tillage crop rotation (NTR), no-tillage crop succession (NTS), and natural pasture (NP), in four replications each. The crop sequences were bean/fallow/maize /fallow/soybean/fallow in CTR, maize/fallow/maize/fallow/maize/fallow in CTS, bean/oat/maize/turnip/soybean/vetch in NTR and maize/vetch/maize/vetch/maize/ vetch in NTS. Soil density, macroporosity, microporosity, total porosity, organic carbon, and water aggregate stability (MWD) were evaluated in April 2001 for the soil layers 0-2.5, 2.5-5, 5-10,10-15,15-20, and 20-30 cm. In the 0-10 cm layer, soil density was higher in no-tillage than conventional tillage and natural pasture, while macroporosity, total porosity, and the macroporosity/total porosity relation was higher in conventional tillage in the mean for cropping systems in this layer. Organic carbon, MWD, and sensibility index for MWD means of layers and tillage systems were higher in no-tillage and natural pasture than in conventional tillage.