Abstract
Soil water conservation through tillage is one of the appropriate ways of addressing soil moisture deficit in rainfed agriculture. This study evaluated the effects of tillage practices on soil moisture conservation and crop yields in Mwala District, Eastern Kenya during the long rains (LR) and short rains (SR) of 2012/13. Six tillage systems: Disc plough (MB), Disc plough and harrowing (MBH), Ox-ploughing (OX), Subsoiling – ripping (SR), Hand hoe and Tied Ridges (HTR) and Hand hoe only (H) and, three cropping systems namely, sole maize, sole bean and maize - bean intercrop, were investigated in a split-plot design with four replicates. Data on soil water content was monitored at different weeks after planting and the crop yields at end of each growing season. A three-season average shows that soil water content and crop yields were higher in conventional tillage methods compared to the conservation tillage methods. Long term tillage experiments are thus required at different locations, under various environmental and soil conditions to validate the study findings.
Abstract from the paper’s OpenAlex record; open copy licensed cc-by. Read at the source ↗
The text the model read, with the source record’s inline markup (italics, sub- and superscripts) rendered and its character entities decoded; quote offsets refer to the raw text.
Claims 3
Claim · model-written summary
Conventional tillage had higher soil water content than conservation tillage over three seasons.
- Treatment
- conventional tillage methodse0
- Outcome
- soil water contente0
- Direction
- highere0
- Qualifier
- three-season averagee0
- Comparator
- conservation tillage methodse0
Zea maysOrganisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“A three-season average shows that soil water content and crop yields were higher in conventional tillage methods compared to the conservation tillage methods”
e1“sole maize, sole bean and maize - bean intercrop”
Claim · model-written summary
Conventional tillage had higher crop yields than conservation tillage over three seasons.
- Treatment
- conventional tillage methodse0
- Outcome
- crop yieldse0
- Direction
- highere0
- Qualifier
- three-season averagee0
- Comparator
- conservation tillage methodse0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“A three-season average shows that soil water content and crop yields were higher in conventional tillage methods compared to the conservation tillage methods”
e1“sole maize, sole bean and maize - bean intercrop”
Claim · model-written summary
Authors recommend long-term tillage experiments across locations and conditions to validate the findings.
- Outcome
- Long term tillage experimentse0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Long term tillage experiments are thus required at different locations, under various environmental and soil conditions to validate the study findings”
e1“sole maize, sole bean and maize - bean intercrop”
The same questions in other papers
tillage · soil: physics · Zea mays (maize)Positive and negative results
123 papers in the same direction as this paper · 20 in the opposite direction · 8 reporting no difference from an alternative
- positive
- negative
- negative
148 papers more in this group
See all 152 papers →tillage · yield · Zea mays (maize)Positive and negative results
811 papers in the same direction as this paper · 230 in the opposite direction · 57 reporting no difference from an alternative
- positive
- no effect
- negative
1,095 papers more in this group
See all 1,099 papers →Claims are grouped by organism, treatment and what was measured or targeted. A paper counts as positive when any of its claims in the group is positive.