Abstract
Organic farming practices aim to maximise the delivery of ecosystem services in the agricultural landscape. However, in order to maintain optimal crop productivity the mouldboard plough is often used to control weeds and this can have negative effects on a range of soil parameters, thereby jeopardizing delivery of these services. Reduced tillage (RT) can be beneficial to soils and could improve both the efficiency of production and the delivery of ecosystem services on organic farms. However, abandoning the plough on organic farms is challenging due to impaired weed control. Here we report on a two year trial where an RT system with the Ecodyn, with duck feet shares operating at a depth of 7.6 cm in combination with seed drilling, was compared with mouldboard ploughing. Spring oat and spring barley establishment was improved under RT. Weed cover and biomass was greater under RT, but there was no difference in cereal grain yields in either year. The RT system used 71% less fuel and tillage operations took 72% less time that the plough system.
Abstract from the paper’s OpenAlex record, shown for indexing and research. Copyright remains with the authors or the publisher.
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 6
Claim · model-written summary
Reduced tillage improved spring oat establishment.
- Taxon
- Spring oat
Avena sativae0 - Treatment
- RTe0
- Outcome
- establishmente0
- Direction
- improvede0
- Comparator
- mouldboard ploughinge1
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.

Verbatim
e0“Spring oat and spring barley establishment was improved under RT”
e1“an RT system with the Ecodyn, with duck feet shares operating at a depth of 7.6 cm in combination with seed drilling, was compared with mouldboard ploughing”
Claim · model-written summary
Reduced tillage improved spring barley establishment.
- Taxon
- spring barley
Hordeum vulgaree0 - Treatment
- RTe0
- Outcome
- establishmente0
- Direction
- improvede0
- Comparator
- mouldboard ploughinge1
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
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Verbatim
e0“Spring oat and spring barley establishment was improved under RT”
e1“an RT system with the Ecodyn, with duck feet shares operating at a depth of 7.6 cm in combination with seed drilling, was compared with mouldboard ploughing”
Claim · model-written summary
Weed cover and biomass were greater under reduced tillage.
- Taxon
- Spring oat
Avena sativae2 - Treatment
- RTe0
- Interactor
- Weede0weed
- Outcome
- Weed cover and biomasse0
- Direction
- greatere0
- Comparator
- mouldboard ploughinge1
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.

Verbatim
e0“Weed cover and biomass was greater under RT”
e1“RT system with the Ecodyn, with duck feet shares operating at a depth of 7.6 cm in combination with seed drilling, was compared with mouldboard ploughing”
e2“Spring oat and spring barley”
Claim · model-written summary
Cereal grain yields did not differ between tillage systems in either year.
- Taxon
- Spring oat
Avena sativae2 - Treatment
- RTe1
- Outcome
- cereal grain yieldse0
- Direction
- no differencee0
- Qualifier
- in either yeare0
- Comparator
- mouldboard ploughinge1
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.

Verbatim
e0“there was no difference in cereal grain yields in either year”
e1“RT system with the Ecodyn, with duck feet shares operating at a depth of 7.6 cm in combination with seed drilling, was compared with mouldboard ploughing”
e2“Spring oat and spring barley”
Claim · model-written summary
Reduced tillage used 71% less fuel than ploughing.
- Taxon
- Spring oat
Avena sativae1 - Treatment
- RT systeme0
- Outcome
- fuele0
- Direction
- lesse0
- Value
- 71%e0
- Comparator
- plough systeme0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.

Verbatim
e0“The RT system used 71% less fuel and tillage operations took 72% less time that the plough system”
e1“Spring oat and spring barley”
Claim · model-written summary
Reduced tillage operations took 72% less time than ploughing.
- Taxon
- Spring oat
Avena sativae1 - Treatment
- RT systeme0
- Outcome
- timee0
- Direction
- lesse0
- Value
- 72%e0
- Comparator
- plough systeme0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.

Verbatim
e0“The RT system used 71% less fuel and tillage operations took 72% less time that the plough system”
e1“Spring oat and spring barley”
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See all 37 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.