To address drought and climate variability that exacerbates phenomena such as heat waves, conservation agriculture is a sustainable system, whose basic components are minimum tillage, soil coverage with stubble, and crop diversification.
Minimum tillage can be developed under a system of “permanent beds”, which are a set of furrows whose elevated part, where planting is done, is not tilled, to limit the movement of the soil to the shape of the beds only when necessary.
In Mexico, conservation agriculture is carried out mainly because under this system it helps to improve water management and reduce soil compaction and because it allows the use of mechanical methods for weed control and facilitates the management of stubble in the area. floor.
According to specialists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), which carries out studies on a research platform in the Experimental Field in Tlaltizapan, Morelos, they evaluate conservation agriculture practices and planting of some legume species as an alternative to increase yields and improve production systems.
“Compared to the treatments where tillage was done, the permanent beds responded very well to drought during the crop growth stage. In the spring-summer 2022 cycle, which was perhaps one of the driest, the permanent beds They yielded almost twice as much as the tillage treatments,” said Óscar Bañuelos.
The person in charge of the research platform commented that the cost-benefit ratio was good in both permanent bed treatments; but where there was tillage, the investment was not recovered.
Furthermore, root attack by pests such as wireworm was much greater in tillage treatments than in permanent bed treatments. And therefore performance was affected more.
Regarding ear rot, there was no significant difference between treatments, commented Jessica González, post-harvest specialist at CIMMYT.
And in the north of the Republic, in the Cajeme II research platform, in Sonora, where for 6 years CIMMYT specialists evaluate the effect of sowing with conservation agriculture, wheat in permanent beds had higher yields than in beds with traditional tillage. .
On average, with 4 relief irrigations, a yield of 7.3 tons per hectare was obtained with conventional tillage. Meanwhile, the average in permanent beds was 8.1 tons per hectare. An average difference of 0.8 tons per hectare in favor of planting in permanent beds.
According to Manuel Ruiz, another of the researchers who works at the research platform in Cajeme II, “when planting in permanent beds it is better to leave the stubble on the surface than to remove it, since it prevents water evaporation and protects the soil. against the sun and rain, reduces the growth of weeds and provides organic matter.”
Another group of researchers from CIMMYT and the University of California evaluated the two types of permanent bed widths. For corn and small grains in central Mexico, they range between 0.75 and 0.85 meters.
In some regions of El Bajío, they are wider beds that are equivalent to two straits: 1.5 meters to 1.7 meters wide.
They evaluated the two types of permanent beds in the production of corn, wheat and barley under rainfed and irrigated conditions in Querétaro, Guanajuato, Michoacán and the State of Mexico, for at least three consecutive crop cycles.
Thus, in the research platforms of San Juan del Río I and Cadereyta, in Querétaro, the two sites with the least precipitation, corn yield was similar in the two types of beds.
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On the other hand, on the Apaseo el Alto platform, in Guanajuato, there was a slight tendency towards higher yields in narrow beds; but in Indaparapeo, in Michoacán, the trend was in favor of wide beds.
CIMMYT specialists concluded that no significant differences in performance were observed between both narrow and wide permanent beds.
And it was confirmed that among the main benefits of using permanent beds are controlled traffic that reduces soil compaction, facilitation of mechanical sowing, and better water distribution.
2024-03-28 22:43:57
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