Crop Rotations and Soil Tillage Interactions for Biomass Production

Year 2014, Volume: 10 Issue: 1, 1 - 6, 01.02.2014

Chris Cavalarıs Chris Karamoutıs Theofanis Gemtos

Abstract

The introduction of energy crops for biofuel production is expected to cause severe soil

degradation as all crop material will be removed from the fields leaving the soil bare and

susceptible to soil erosion. The adoption of crop rotations to keep the soil covered by vegetation all

year round along with the application of reduced tillage or no-tillage methods can offer

considerable soil protection. Basic criterion for an energy crop is the positive energy balance.

Energy budgets for two energy crop rotations (in the first one all the plant material is removed

from the field while in the second one the residues are left on the soil) and five tillage methods

were estimated. Crop rotations were combined with: 1. Conventional Tillage (CT), 2. Reduced

tillage with heavy cultivator (HC), 3. Reduced tillage with rotary cultivator (RC), 4. Strip tillage or

disk harrow (ST/DH) and no-tillage (NT). The energy budget proved to be positive when the whole

plant material of a crop was used as an energy feedstock but turned to negative if part of it was

left on the field and crop yield was not high enough. The first rotation presented higher net energy

gain as the whole plant material was utilized. Energy efficiency was higher in the ST/DH for both

rotations and all the crops. Soybean proved to be most efficient as a second crop in the year than

sunflower. In sweet sorghum net energy was high due to the high biomass production but energy

efficiency was low due to high energy requirements of irrigation. The most efficient crops were the

low-input, non-irrigated winter mixtures of vetch / oats and triticale / peas.

Keywords

Crop rotations, soil tillage

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