Conservation tillage impacts on soil, crop and the environment

TLDR

Sustainable land management is essential to meet food demand while protecting soil and the environment, and conservation tillage—especially zero‑tillage—has been promoted worldwide for its potential to improve soil health, crop productivity, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This review seeks to evaluate conservation tillage’s impact on soil, crop, and environmental outcomes across diverse agro‑ecological regions. It synthesizes studies comparing conservation tillage practices, such as zero‑tillage and minimum tillage, with conventional tillage to assess their effects. Research indicates conservation tillage enhances soil physical, chemical, and biological properties, boosts crop yields, and, particularly with zero‑tillage, offers the greatest environmental benefits by mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.

Abstract

There is an urgent need to match food production with increasing world population through identification of sustainable land management strategies. However, the struggle to achieve food security should be carried out keeping in mind the soil where the crops are grown and the environment in which the living things survive. Conservation agriculture (CA), practising agriculture in such a way so as to cause minimum damage to the environment, is being advocated at a large scale world-wide. Conservation tillage, the most important aspect of CA, is thought to take care of the soil health, plant growth and the environment. This paper aims to review the work done on conservation tillage in different agro-ecological regions so as to understand its impact from the perspectives of the soil, the crop and the environment. Research reports have identified several benefits of conservation tillage over conventional tillage (CT) with respect to soil physical, chemical and biological properties as well as crop yields. Not less than 25% of the greenhouse gas effluxes to the atmosphere are attributed to agriculture. Processes of climate change mitigation and adaptation found zero tillage (ZT) to be the most environmental friendly among different tillage techniques. Therefore, conservation tillage involving ZT and minimum tillage which has potential to break the surface compact zone in soil with reduced soil disturbance offers to lead to a better soil environment and crop yield with minimal impact on the environment.