Durum Wheat Yield And Quality In A No-Tillage Experiment

Soil fertility, due to soil erosion and organic matter depletion, is the biggest sustainability challenge for conventional tillage in dryland agriculture of Southern Italy and the adoption of no tillage practices can address these issue (Troccoli et al., 2015). No tillage and residues management are widely considered the most important conservation agriculture practices as alternatives to conventional ploughing and tillage disturbance (Gristina et al., 2018).However, although direct seeding and residues surface disposal increase water holding capacity, crop yield resulted often limited in the transition period. Soil physical, chemical and microbiological changes, typically long term effects, occur in the 3-5 years range from the beginning of tillage management (Colecchia et al., 2015). Aim of this work is to assess the response to two different soil tillage management in a Vertisol of Southern Italy of durum wheat grain yield and quality in a 4-year experiment.