Impact of soil tillage intensity on faba bean cultivation

Abstract

Since 2015, the EU Greening program requested increasing the area of leguminous crops. Lithuanian conditions are the most favorable for pea and faba bean cultivation. Therefore, the area of these crops increased several times. Unfortunately, there is no precise scientific background of faba bean growing technologies in Lithuania. For this reason, a stationary field experiment was performed in Aleksandras Stulginskis University, Lithuania. The soil in the experiment was light loam (Endohypogleyic-Eutric Planosol, PLe-gln-w). The climate of the experimental site is subarctic, with wet winters and moderate summers. The long-term (60 years) average annual precipitation rate is 625.5 mm. Faba bean crop was grown in differently tilled soil: deeply (22-25 cm) and shallowly (12-15 cm) ploughed with a moldboard plough, deeply (25-30 cm) cultivated with a chisel cultivator, shallowly (10-12 cm) tilled with a disc harrow and no tilled (direct drilling). The aim of the experiment was to investigate the influence of five reduced tillage patterns on the parameters of faba bean cultivation. The results from the 2016 vegetative period are presented. According to the results of investigations, reduction of primary tillage intensity from conventional deep ploughing to no-till (direct drilling) mainly had no essential impact on productivity potential of faba bean cultivation. The density of crop was a key parameter, which effected variance between the treatments.