Changes in soil-pores and wheat root geometry due to strategic tillage in a no-tillage cropping system
Promil Mehra
A B H , Pankaj Kumar C , Nanthi Bolan D E , Jack Desbiolles F , Susan Orgill A and Matthew D. Denton G
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A New South Wales Department of Primary Industries, Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute,Menangle, NSW 2568, Australia.
B Future Industry Institute, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, SA 5095, Australia.
C Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gujarat 382007, India.
D Global Centre for Environmental Remediation, University of Newcastle, NSW 2308, Australia.
E CRC for High Performance Soils, University of Newcastle, NSW 2308, Australia.
F Agricultural Machinery Research and Design Centre, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, SA 5095, Australia.
G School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, University of Adelaide, Glen Osmond, SA 5064, Australia.
H Corresponding author. Email: Promil.Mehra@dpi.nsw.gov.au
Soil Research 59(1) 83-96 https://doi.org/10.1071/SR20010
Submitted: 11 January 2020 Accepted: 18 July 2020 Published: 21 August 2020
Abstract
Tillage management can influence soil physical properties such as soil strength, moisture content, temperature, nutrient and oxygen availability, which in turn can affect crop growth during the early establishment phase. However, a short-term ‘strategic’ conventional tillage (CT) shift in tillage practice in a continuous no-tillage (NT) cropping system may change the soil-pore and root geometry. This study identifies the impact of a tillage regime shift on the belowground soil-pore and root geometry. Micro X-ray computed tomography (µXCT) was used to quantify, measure and compare the soil-pore and root architecture associated with the impact of tillage shift across different plant growth stages. Soil porosity was 12.2% higher under CT in the top 0–100 mm and 7.4% in the bottom 100–200 mm of the soil core compared with NT. Soil-pore distribution, i.e. macroporosity (>75 μm), was 13.4% higher under CT, but mesoporosity (30–75 μm) was 9.6% higher under NT. The vertical distributions of root biomass and root architecture measurements (i.e. root length density) in undisturbed soil cores were 9.6% higher under the NT and 8.7% higher under the CT system respectively. These results suggest that low soil disturbance under the continuous NT system may have encouraged accumulation of more root biomass in the top 100 mm depth, thus developing better soil structure. Overall, µXCT image analyses of soil cores indicated that this tillage shift affected the soil total carbon, due to the significantly higher soil-pore (i.e. pore surface area, porosity and average pore size area) and root architecture (i.e. root length density, root surface density and root biomass) measurements under the CT system.
Additional keywords: micro X-ray computed tomography (µXCT), root length density, root surface area, soil carbon, soil-pore characteristics.
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