The knowledge about the influence that soil tillage has on the agricultural production and profit has been the permanent concern of both scientific research and farmers. Soil tillage has an evident impact on the soil and production, but without a constant value and a certain size, as the relation with the surrounding environment always interferes, especially the weather conditions, the status of the ecological determinants and the cultivated technology applied. The crop level depends on the degree to which each factor and all of them together come close to the optimum values requested by the biology of the plants, so that the corn production recorded in the experimental years in the area of the Somesan Plateau is connected to the soil tiling system and the climatic conditions. This paper follows the line of the present and future attempts of transforming the technologies by the rationalization of some of their components, respectively by replacing one soil tilling system with another one, with the final purpose of preserving the soil and obtaining efficient and sufficient productions. The high balance of soil tillage expenses in the corn culture technology motivates the rationalization of the soil tillage with the purpose of reducing the fuel consumption and introducing new soil tillage alternatives with the chisel, paraplow and rotary harrow which lead to making the cultivation technology more productive, an increase in profit for the surface unit and a decrease of the production costs in the area. The new soil tilling systems recommended for different climate and soil areas and actual local conditions constitute alternatives which eliminate the risk factors and their negative consequences on the agricultural agro-ecosystems. The increase in the fuel prices and the necessity of reducing the energetic input with the purpose of increasing the economic efficiency of the soil cultivation was another cause which led to major changes in the concept of soil tillage. This paper is designed as an experiment with the four tilling systems in which the production and economic efficiency is observed for corn, which has the highest balance in the area in the arid years conditions which we have been facing lately. The analysis of the corn production by the tillage system confirms the above mentioned, with productions between 3656 hg/ha and 4504 kg/ha.The analysis of the recorded corn production confirms the inefficiency of the use in the conditions of the Somesan Plateau of the rotary harrow and chisel, as highly significant negative differences with limits between 583–738 kg/ha have been recorded comparatively to the classical plowing alternative.

soil tillage, production, economic efficiency

Presentation: oral