Effect of conservation tillage senarios on energy consumption in soybean production in Iran: Case study (Golestan province)

Abstract

A study was conducted to determine the effect of four tillage methods on the energy efficiency indices in soybean cultivation in northern Iran, Golestan province. Four tillage methods including conventional tillage (CT) (Disk harrow+planting with planter), minimum tillage (MT) (Chisel packer+planting with planter), no-tillage with no-till planter (NT-Planter) and no tillage with no-till grain drill (NT-Grain drill) were used in this study. Experimental design was a randomized complete block design with four replications. Energy efficiency indices consisted of energy ratio (ER), energy productivity (EP), energy intensity (EI) and net energy gain (NEG) were then calculated. The results indicated that NT-Grain drill had the highest energy ratio of 4.5 and yield of 3612 kg ha^-1 more than the other treatments. The energy efficiency is higher in NT-Grain drill and equals to 0.7777, 108.3%, followed by the NT-Planter (0.7531, 100.1%), MT and CT (0.7183, 100%). The high values of energy productivity in NT-Grain drill (0.19 kg MJ^-1) and in NT-Planter (0.17 kg MJ^-1) compared to the CT (0.15 kg MJ^-1), showed that NT systems had higher energy efficiencies. Although minimum tillage had the lowest consumption of energy with the amount of 2030.2 MJ ha^-1among the treatments but due to reduction of soybean yield with the amount of 2794 kg had the lowest amount of net energy gain. The consumed energy of conventional tillage method was also obtained 2840.6 MJ ha^-1. Using of conservation tillage methods would lead to less energy consumption and proper management and optimum use of inputs.