Soil Water Capacity and Pore Size Distribution in Different Soil Tillage Systems in the Spring Barley Crop

Barley is an important cereal crop with versatile uses: barley grains are part of the human diet and are also used for animal feed, while the potential to use barley for ethanol production provides this grain with a promising bioenergy potential. As scientific research in the field of bioenergy progresses, barley may play an even greater role in meeting the world’s future energy needs. The challenge facing today’s barley growers, and one that will undoubtedly be addressed by future generations of grain farmers, is how to grow higher yields with lower costs while minimizing damage to the soil. One way to achieve this is by using simplified tillage methods, thereby avoiding soil compaction, structural degradation, and erosion. Moreover, studies have shown that when soil is cultivated using simplified methods, crop yields may actually increase. Our research was conducted in a long-term stationary field experiment, which was located at the Vytautas Magnus University Agriculture Academy Experimental Station. The aim of the investigation was to determine the effect of conservation tillage and deep plowing systems on soil water capacity and pore size distribution in spring barley cultivation. Comparing simplified tillage systems with deep plowing (DP), it can be concluded that the no-tillage (NT) technology most significantly improved the studied indicators, while the deep plowing (DP) technology exhibited the poorest results.