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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Contents Vol 48(3)

Tillage practices altered labile soil organic carbon and microbial function without affecting crop yields

Margaret M. Roper A D , V. V. S. R. Gupta B and Daniel V. Murphy C
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A CSIRO Plant Industry, Private Bag No. 5, Wembley, WA 6913, Australia.

B CSIRO Entomology, Private Bag No. 2, Glen Osmond, SA 5064, Australia.

C Soil Biology Group, School of Earth and Environment, Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia.

D Corresponding author. Email: Margaret.Roper@csiro.au

Australian Journal of Soil Research 48(3) 274-285 https://doi.org/10.1071/SR09143
Submitted: 7 August 2009  Accepted: 16 November 2009   Published: 6 May 2010

Abstract

A 7-year tillage experiment was conducted on a deep sand in the central wheat belt of Western Australia between 1998 and 2004 to evaluate the impact of tillage intensity [no-tillage (NT), conservation tillage (CT), and rotary tillage (RT)] on soil organic matter, microbial biomass and function, and crop yields in a wheat–lupin rotation. A fourth treatment (subterranean clover pasture, Pasture) with least soil disturbance was included as a comparison. By March 2004, total soil carbon (C) in NT and CT increased by 4.4 and 2.6 t/ha, respectively, to an average of 17.6 t/ha in the top 0.1 m of the soil profile. There was a loss of total soil C in RT (–0.5 t/ha), which was significant compared with the other 2 tillage treatments. Total soil C and nitrogen (N) contents in the pasture treatment were similar to those in NT and CT at the end of the experiment. Labile fractions of soil C responded more rapidly to tillage practice, with significant reductions by 2001 in light fraction C and dissolved organic C in the RT treatment compared with the other 3 treatments. The effect of RT on biology and function was seen early in the experiment and, compared with Pasture, NT, and CT, intense tillage in RT significantly reduced microbial biomass and cellulase activity in the surface 0.05 m by the third year of the experiment. However, at a depth of 0.05–0.10 m there were no significant differences between treatments. Grain yields in NT, CT, and RT were unaffected by tillage except in 2003, when lupin yield under RT (1.6 t/ha) was significantly less than under NT (2.0 t/ha) and CT (1.9 t/ha). Minimal differences between NT and CT are a reflection of the minimum disturbance in the CT treatment, although there were significant differences between CT and NT in microbial indices such as microbial quotient and metabolic quotient, suggesting a future divergence of these treatments.

Additional keywords: no-tillage, conservation-tillage, rotary-tillage, pasture, microbial biomass.


Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Grains Research and Development Corporation. The authors thank Anne McMurdo for technical support in the field and for laboratory analyses, Reg Lunt (Department of Agriculture and Food WA) for doing the tillage treatments each year, and Chunya Zhu for undertaking N analyses. We thank Rick Hughes, Particle Analysis Service Laboratory, CSIRO Earth Science and Resource Engineering, Kensington, for particle size analyses. Financial support for VVSR Gupta was provided by CSIRO Land and Water and Entomology.


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