Short-Term Investigation into the Effect of the Traffic Farming Systems on the Soil Physical Behavior of an Arable Land

Abstract

The field experiment was carried out with clay loam soil to monitor the dry soil bulk density (BD), moisture content (dry base) (MC), and cone index (CI) till the depth of 0-60 cm under two farming systems, namely the controlled traffic farming system (CTF) and the random traffic farming system (RTF) from 1/02 - 30/04/2023. During the trial period, the RTF system soil's BD increased from 1.45 g cm-3 to 1.48 g cm-3 with an increase of 2%, while the increase in the CTF system soil's BD was 0.7 % (from 1.36 g cm-3 to 1.37 g cm-3), the MC also increased from 27.7 % to 28.08 % (1.37 %) in the RTF soil and from 36.16 % to 37.64 % (4.09 %) in the CTF system soil. While the CI increased from 2438 kPa to 2499 kPa with an increase of 2.26 % for the RTF system soil, however, it became 2018 kPa after it was 2096 kPa for the CTF soil with a decrease of 3.72 %. The results showed that switching from the RTF to the CTF system reduced the soil' BD by 6.85 %, reduced the soil CI by 16.55 % and increased the soil MC by 32.31 %. Finally, the graphic curves reflected the stability and consistency of the CTF system soil's physical behavior with increasing depth compared to the RTF system soil's physical behavior which fluctuated and disturbed for the same studied depth and under the same climatic conditions and traditional farming practices.