Tillage in the growing season is ineffective as a tool of increased soil N mineralization

Summary

Soil tillage serves a number of purposes such as control of weeds, incorporation of crop residues and manures, and maintenance or improvement of soil mechanical properties, including seedbed preparations. As a side-effect, soil tillage may affect turnover of organic matter (OM) by changing the particle size and spatial distribution of crop and manure residues in soil and by increasing the intimacy of residue/soil contacts. By breaking soil structural elements, tillage may contribute further to N mineralization by exposing physically protected organic matter to microbial turnover. Therefore, adjusting the time, intensity and frequency of soil tillage operations may enable optimization of synchrony, defined as the matching through time of N availability and crop N demand. This idea was experimentally investigated in the present study.