Evaluation of Soil Biological Indicators Under Conventional and Conservation Tillage in Rice-Wheat Cropping System

Abstract

The objective of this review paper is to provide a detailed information that how different tillage practices affect soil biological indicators under a rice-wheat cropping system. The tillage practices here we explain are conservation and conventional tillage. The important soil biological indicators that are used to assess soil quality are earthworms, particulate organic matter, potentially mineralized nitrogen, soil enzymes and soil respiration. All of these have a direct relation with soil microbial communities. For understanding the effect of tillage practices on soil biological indicators we studied the effect of tillage practices on soil microbial communities. The tillage practices affect the activity and community structure of soil microorganisms by changing the habitat characteristics for soil microorganism soil porosity, soil moisture and the substrates for soil microorganisms. The microbial communities involve soil bacterial communities, pathogenic fungal colonies, non-pathogenic fungal colonies and nematodes. Under zero tillage soil micro-arthropods and earthworms densities (number m^-2) were higher than conventional tillage. Soil bacterial community, fungal colonies and nematodes were higher in zero tillage. Conservation tillage improves both physicochemical and biological properties of soil. Hence conservation tillage effect biological indicators positively in a rice-wheat system.