Daily Dosage - Agronomy Tillage

Agronomy - Tillage  - Oneliner

• Ploughing  is opening of compacted soil with  the help of different ploughs.  

• Ploughing is mainly done to  open the hard  soil. 

• Optimum  range  of  soil moisture  for effective ploughing is  25 to 50% depletion  of  available soil  moisture. 

• Light soils  can  be  ploughed in wide  range of  soil moisture conditions  while the range is narrow for  heavy soils.

• Depth of  ploughing  depends  on the  effective  root zone depth  of the crops.

• Crops with  taproot system  require greater depth  of soil, while fibrous,  shallow rooted crops  require shallow ploughing.       

• In heavy soils  3 to 5 ploughings  are  needed.

• In light soils  1 to 3 ploughings  are required. 

• Country plough is  used for multiple purposes.

• Disc plough  is used for cutting of creeping  or spreading grass and inversion. 

• Tractor drawn mould board  plough  used  for  deep  ploughing  and inversion.

• Animal  drawn mould board plough  is used for incorporation  of manures, fertilizers and plant residues. 1 cm of surface soil  over one hectare of land  weighs about  1.50 t.    

•  In  western countries  deep  ploughing is  50cm  depth for  rainfed conditions  70cm  for irrigated  conditions 

According to  CRIDA, 

• Shallow  ploughing:  5-6 cm 

• Medium  deep ploughing: 15-20  cm 

• Deep  ploughing:  25-30 cm

• A deep  tillage of  25-30cm depth  is  necessary for  deep  rooted crops like  pigeonpea. 

• Moderate deep  tillage of  15-20 cm  is required  for  maize. 

• Residual effect of deep tillage is  marginal. 

• It is  advisable to  go for deep  ploughing  only for  long duration, deep  rooted  crops.

• Cotton roots grow  to  a depth  of  2m  in  deep alluvial  soil  without any pans.