Present economic constraints lead to finding new solutions of tillage. This is not about changing soil tillage practices for the simple satisfaction of doing things differently than others, but rather to improve the practices of tillage and sowing to reduce the costs involved and the time needed for that. One way to achieve this goal is to reduce the number of passes on the ground, which may lead to an infiltration increase and also eliminate the need for primary works of the soil. Traffic control can reduce the cost of fuel for the establishment of cereal crops by 40%, allowing these operations to be completed with less powerful tractor while maintaining the yields at the same level. The current trend, particular to an agriculture with low environmental impact and costs of production, is to adopt cultivation techniques that preserve or improve soil characteristics in a conservative tillage. This paper aims to present research conducted over several years on land DS Timisoara regarding the influence the tillage technology has, particularly agricultural machine tractor unit used on some of the soil’s physical properties such as bulk density, porosity and the degree of compaction, with production tracking obtained from maize grains and fuel consumption resulted for each variant. At the same time there were tested 3 types of technologies: conventional technology (with moldboard plowing and using disc harrow to prepare the seedbed), the minimum tillage technology (soil processing by multiple passes with a disc harrow or rotary harrow use in combination with vibrocultor) and direct sowing ( unprocessed field sowing), using for this purpose for processing specific soil aggregates. The final results highlight the significant production differences which have to be correlated with both production costs and the long-term effects on the soil’s regenerative capacity.

soil, tillage, yield, fuel consumption

Presentation: poster