Different soil tillage systems influence accumulation of soil organic matter in organic agriculture

摘要

As a sustainable method of agriculture, organic agriculture aims to increase the soil organic matter through the use of crop rotation, legume cover crop, animal green manure, and organic compost. These practices add organic residues with high organic Carbon (C) which results in a higher soil organic matter content over time primarily due to the no-tillage practices. However, different soil tillage systems, such as conventional tillage and reduced tillage are also used in organic agriculture, and therefore the accumulation of organic matter does not follow similar trends. The studies under conventional tillage have shown that soil tillage influences negatively the organic matter accumulation in organic agriculture plots, while the results from different studies on organic agriculture showed the potential benefits of reduced or zero tillage for organic matter accumulation.