When does no-till yield more? A global meta-analysis
By C. Pittelkow, B. Linquist, M. Lundy, Xin-qiang Liang, K. J. Groenigen, Juhwan Lee, N. Gestel, Johan Six, R. Venterea, C. Kessel. 2015
785 citations recorded by the source corpus.
No-till agriculture represents a relatively widely adopted management system that aims to reduce soil erosion, decrease input costs, and sustain long-term crop productivity. However, its impacts on crop yields are variable, and an improved understanding of the factors limiting productivity is needed to support evidence-based management decisions. We conducted a global meta-analysis to evaluate the influence of various crop and environmental variables on no-till relative to conventional tillage yields using data obtained from peer-reviewed publications (678 studies with 6005 paired observations, representing 50 crops and 63 countries). Side-by-side yield comparisons were restricted to studies comparing conventional tillage to no-till practices in the absence of other cropping system modifications. Crop category was the most important factor influencing the overall yield response to no-till followed by aridity index, residue management, no-till duration, and N rate. No-till yields matched conventional tillage yields for oilseed, cotton, and legume crop categories. Among cereals, the negative impacts of no-till were smallest for wheat (−2.6%) and largest for rice (−7.5%) and maize (−7.6%). No-till performed best under rainfed conditions in dry climates, with yields often being equal to or higher than conventional tillage practices. Yields in the first 1–2 years following no-till implementation declined for all crops except oilseeds and cotton, but matched conventional tillage yields after 3–10 years except for maize and wheat in humid climates. Overall, no-till yields were reduced by 12% without N fertilizer addition and 4% with inorganic N addition. Our study highlights factors contributing to and/or decreasing no-till yield gaps and suggests that improved targeting and adaptation, possibly including additional system modifications, are necessary to optimize no-till performance and contribute to food production goals. In addition, our results provide a basis for conducting trade-off analyses to support the development of no-till crop management and international development strategies based on available scientific evidence.
Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Plant Science, Soil Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1de1ed5bc168bf2174d1aea45d2d2450affdc3e9
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Citations in the corpus
- Abiotic and biotic factors affecting crop seed germination and seedling emergence: a conceptual framework (2018, background): “Several studies have been performed to evaluate whether no-, minimum and conventional tillage have different impact (s) on overall crop yield (see recent global meta-analytical study by Pittelkow et al. 2015).”
- Nitrogen fertilization reduces yield declines following no-till adoption (2015, methodology): “As reported by Pittelkow et al. (2015a), information for continuous and categorical variables was extracted from the Materials and Methods section of publications, and to a lesser extent was inferred from discussions of crop management details found in the Introduction or Discussion sections.”
- Determining water use efficiency for wheat and cotton: A meta-regression analysis (2016, neutral): “Focusing on the farm productivity, Pittelkow et al. (2015) identified 678 studies representing 50 crops and 63 countries, and found that the best performance of no-till was for rainfed agriculture in dry climates given the evidence that the yields were equal to or higher than that of conventional…”