Tillage, cover crops, and grass cover related soil water changes in vineyards

Soil moisture content (SWC) has a major impact on soil quality and plant health. Climate change affects soil moisture conditions in agricultural ecosystems, due to changes in precipitation amount and intensity. The aim of present study was to investigate the effect of different inter-row management techniques as effective nature-based solutions on soil moisture in vineyard ecosystems based on own and literature data. The main focus was on SWC data, while available datasets on soil organic carbon (SOC), bulk density, penetration resistance, and saturated hydraulic conductivities were further studied.

We found 70 data sets concerning soil water content (SWC) in non-irrigated vineyards involving tillage and green cover. The data revealed that SWC enhancement depends on the type of green cover, as perennial grass (GC) tended to increase SWC on average by 15%, whereas cover crops (CC) decreased overall SWC on average by 20% compared to control or tilled (T) inter-row management. Sub-humid climates showed 35%–73% higher SWC compared to semi-arid research sites. Studying data divided into different temperature zones also revealed that the lower (<12°C) average annual air temperature sites had the highest SWC in vineyards.

In general, the highest average SWC in GC also included the highest soil organic carbon (SOC) content and the lowest average bulk density (1.41 g cm⁻³) in the data set. However, changes in overall bulk density values were not significant among inter-row soil management. We found that green cover generally increases penetration resistance (22% for GC and 61% for CC) and reduces the saturated hydraulic conductivities of the soils (i.e. 30% for GC and 79% for CC). Our data set shows that vegetation present in the inter-row is likely to decrease overall SWC, however, many studies showed the opposite results. Nevertheless, there are numerous benefits of green cover use in vineyard inter-rows, site-specific assessment is highly recommended prior to making changes in management practices.

Acknowledgments: This material is based upon work supported by the Hungarian National Research Fund (OTKA/NKFI) project OTKA FK-131792. The research presented in the article was carried out within the framework of the Széchenyi Plan Plus program with the support of the RRF 2.3.1 21 2022 00008 project.  This research was funded by the Hungarian National Research Fund project number 2023-1.2.4-TÉT-2023-00090 entitled ’Soil health indicators and their relation to soil physical, chemical characteristics, and plant indices’