The effect of plough tillage on productivity of ratooning rice system and soil organic matter

Abstract

Plough tillage had existed in Chinese agricultural history for a very long time. However, more and more farmers prefer to use the rotary machine to do the land preparation due to its ability to provide better soil fragmentation in recent years. The present study was conducted in order to study the effect of plough tillage on grain yield, quality and soil organic matter in ratooning rice systems, in Hunan Province, China, using a rice cultivar, Huanghuazhan as material and two tillage treatments were applied in present study. Conventional rotary tillage was named as CK and plough tillage was named as PT. The result showed that compared to CK, PT treatment not only could improve the grain yield of both main-crop rice and ratooning rice, but also increased the grinding quality and nutrition quality of grains in main-crop rice. Furthermore, higher soil organic matter was recorded under PT.