article · Applied and Environmental Soil Science
Crop rotations and conservation measures significantly influence soil physicochemical properties in cereal-dominated agricultural landscapes. In northwestern Ethiopia, forty-two composite topsoil samples were analysed across seven crop rotation regimes with and without conservation practices. Farmlands managed with conservation practices maintained higher pH, higher available phosphorus, greater cation exchange capacity, and lower exchangeable acidity compared to unconserved land. While continuous maize cultivation yielded higher available phosphorus and lower acidity, it depleted specific nutrients over time. Rotations combining maize with legumes or vegetables, specifically maize-pepper-pepper, maize-wheat-faba bean, and maize-faba bean-pepper, exhibited generally more favourable soil physicochemical trends. The interaction between crop rotation and conservation measures significantly affected most measured soil properties, though longer-term field assessments are required to fully evaluate the long-range responses of soil characteristics to these rotational systems.
Maintaining soil health is essential for sustained food production and environmental resilience. Understanding how specific crop rotations and land conservation practices modify soil chemistry helps land managers preserve vital nutrients and prevent soil degradation. These insights show that diversifying cereal monocultures with legumes or cash crops, coupled with soil conservation, can improve soil chemical balance and support sustainable farming.
This research provides early-stage field evidence that can guide agronomic advisory services, agricultural extension programmes, and regional soil management planners. By identifying rotations that enhance nutrient retention and reduce soil acidity, the findings can inform crop planning software or regional farming guidelines. However, as an observational field study highlighting the need for longer-term evaluation, practical deployment remains at an advisory, pre-commercial stage rather than a standalone commercial product.
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Crop rotation systems especially dominated by cereals (maize and wheat) are intimately linked to soil properties. The objective of the study was to investigate the effect of crop rotations and conservation practice on selected soil physicochemical properties in northwestern part of Ethiopia. Soil samples (0–20 cm depth) were collected from seven crop rotations with conservation practice and adjacent fields without any conservation measure in three replications. A total of forty-two composite samples were used for analysis by using SAS software. The land rotated with maize-wheat-faba bean exhibited significantly higher mean bulk density (1.06 g/cm 3 ) than the land rotated with other crops (i.e., ranging from 1.02 to 1.04 g/cm 3 ). Mean values of pH (5.34, 4.98, and 5.4), Ex. acidity (2.03, 2.53, and 2.16 cmol c /kg), soil OM (4.53%, 5.12%, and 5.02%), CEC (45.17, 48.03, and 49.47 cmol c /kg), TN (0.23, 0.25, and 0.27%), Av.P (10.21, 7.23, and 7.95 ppm), and C : N ratio (11.18, 11.95, and 10.8) were recorded under rotations with continuous maize, maize-pepper-pepper, and maize-faba bean-pepper, respectively. Mean values of pH (5.34 and 4.97), Av.P (9.51 and 6.53 ppm), CEC (48.3 and 46.87 cmol c /kg), and Ex. acidity (2.5 and 2.85 cmol c /kg) were also recorded under conserved and unconserved farmlands, respectively. Considering the interaction effect of crop rotations by conservation practice, all studied parameters, except bulk density, CEC, and C : N ratio, were significantly (<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M1"><mml:mrow><mml:mi>p</mml:mi><mml:mo><</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.05</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:math>) affected. The findings indicate that although continuous maize showed good content of available P and low exchangeable acidity, it will deplete particular nutrients; therefore, maize-pepper-pepper, maize-wheat-faba bean, and maize-faba bean-pepper recorded a slight trend of good values in studied soil physicochemical properties compared to other rotations. A critical study on such type of issue should be carried out over a longer period of time in order to announce detailed understanding about response of soil property to crop rotations to the community.
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DOI: 10.1155/2019/6910879
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