Status of soil health after 18 years of systematic tillage

Carbon sequestration in our soils in the form of stable, humus materials is one of the most important tasks of our time, which can be monitored by tests carried out in long-term cultivation experiments. In our research, our objective was to determine the soil physical (0-10, 10-20, 20-30 and 30-40 cm depth: bulk density, soil moisture content), chemical (0-20 cm: pH(H₂O), pH(KCl), soil organic carbon) and biological properties (0-20 cm: abundance, biomass, species composition of earthworms, soil microbial respiration – SMR). Out of the six soil cultivation methods (no-till, loosening, shallow and deep cultivation, disking and ploughing), we selected three (no-till – NT; shallow cultivation – SC, and ploughing – P) for our experiment. Based on our results, we can say that there was significant difference among the treatments in bulk density in the top layer (0-10 cm) (NT > SC, P), and NT was significantly greater than P in the deeper layers (10–20, 20–30, 30–40 cm). Soil moisture content was only significantly different in the lowest examined layer (30-40 cm), ie. P > SC = NT. The soil organic carbon content (0-10cm) of the investigated treatments was the highest in NT (2.5%), followed by SC (2.4%) and P (2.0%). Soil microbial respiration was significantly greater in NT than in SC and P. The abundance and biomass of earthworms was the highest in the NT treatment (189 ind m^-2, 41.26 g m^-2), which was followed by SC (125 ind m^-2, 36.9 g m^-2) and then by P (48 ind m^-2, 7.4 g m^-2). Thus, NT offers beneficial habitat for earthworms and microorganisms, high SOC storage capacity, whereas the physical parameters tend to be less convenient due to soil compaction in our experiment. Therefore, SC can offer an alternative approach for sustainable soil tillage.