Impact of sustainable tillage on faba beans crop weediness

The world agriculture transforms from conventional tillage systems to minimum or low tillage. Legumes (beans) crop together with decreasing intensity of soil tillage enables to reduce soil degradation and negative impact of agricultural activity on environment, while in Lithuania this needs more research. In long-term experiment we evaluated the impact of sustainable tillage on faba beans crop weediness. The case study included different autumn tillage systems: deep ploughing – 22–25 cm depth (control treatment), shallow ploughing –12–15 cm depth, deep loosening by chisel cultivator – 23–25 cm depth, shallow loosening by disc harrow – 12–15 cm depth and not tilled soil. At the beginning of beans vegetation density of all weeds and of annual weeds was highest in not tilled plots (221.1 and 240.3 seedlings m-2 respectively), while density of perennial weeds (24.2 seedlingsm-2) was significantly higher in deeply loosened plots than that in deeply ploughed (control treatment). At the end of beans vegetation significantly higher density of annual, perennial and total weeds was in not tilled plots as compared with that where deep ploughing was used. Change of deep ploughing to other alternative tillage systems influenced the differences in bean crop weediness, but not significantly. Comparing the weediness of tilled and not tilled plots in most cases significant differences were establishedAgronomijos fakultetasVytauto Didžiojo universiteta