Changes the content of organic matter in soil during the whole cycle of crop rotation
Estonian Research Institute of Agriculture, 13 Teaduse St. 75501 Saku, Estonia;
*Corresponding author; e-mail: ene.ilumäe@eria.ee
Abstract:
The ecological crop rotation in the present trial has been established as a 10-field rotation. The crop sequence was based on calculation of how much of the nutrients does one or another crop take from the soil and how much will be left in the soil after yield harvesting. The crop sequence in ecological crop rotation was: spring wheat, barley with undersown clover, clover, clover, potato, oat, pea, barley with undersown clover, spring turnip rape. The field experiments were carried out in northem Estonia during 2003–2008.After having analyzed the soil organic matter content throughout all the fields of croprotation it became evident that the alterations of organic matter content in soil were dissimilar. The alterations of organic matter content in all fields were in linear correlation (r 95 higher than 0.549, number of pairs 10). Although more than a half rotation has already passed after the beginning of the trial the results are still probably affected by the number of times the clover has been grown on any particular field.
Key words:
crop rotation, soil humidity, soil organic matter