Abstract:
The experiment was conducted for intellect’s most recent inference from studies on the role of tillage and organic residues to changes in soil reaction(pH)and electrical conductivity (EC). Changes in soil pH and EC influenced by crop residues under three tillage systems namely; conventional tillage with residue burning (CT), reduced tillage with residue incorporation (RT), and no-tillage with residue retention (NT) and having initial soil pH (pH 8.16, 8.17, 8.17 and 8.18) at 0-5, 5-15, 15-30 and 30-45 cm soil depths respectively. Changes in pH were related to crop residue incorporation/retention however, the comparative influence of crop residue on pH declines significantly (P < 0.05) at high initial soil pH (8.16). The data also revealed that under conservation tillage (NT and RT) soil pH was lower than conventional tillage at the surface layer (0-5 cm depth). It was also seen that after the end of4th crop cycle soil alkalinity gets reduced mainly under NT for the maize + pigeon pea (7.45) cropping system followed by maize-gram (7.51), soybean-wheat (7.57), and soybean+ pigeon pea (7.57) at 0-5 cm depth. The results trend depicted that under different tillage systems the order NT < RT < CTwas followed over all the depths. The continuous addition of crop residue and minimal/no disturbance of soil resulted in changes in soluble salt concentration that were negligible across all the depths and it was very well underneath the threshold boundaries. This evidence focuses on a better appreciation of residue chemistry and its relationship with soil environs in order to predict the fluxes in biochemical properties such as pH.