Effectiveness of mulch treatments on soil properties and maize growth

H. M.A. El-Kotb, M. M. Harvey, Doaa. M. Khalifa

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted along two successive seasons of summer 2015 and 2016 at Giza Agricultural Experimental Station of the Agricultural Research Center (ARC), Giza, Egypt. Treatments included four mulching: (1) bare soil (un-mulched) as control (BS) (2) black plastic (BP) (3) rice straw (RS) at a rate of 4.8 Mg ha-1 (4) maize straw (MS) at a rate of 4.8 Mg ha-1. Temperature, moisture content, physical properties of soil and maize productivity were significantly affected by the different mulch treatments compared to BS. The highest values of temperature, moisture content, total porosity, saturated hydraulic conductivity of soil and maize productivity, as well as, lowest values of bulk density and penetration resistance were obtained under BP. The RS and MS treatments increased most studied characters. The RS and MS decreased soil temperature. There were no significant differences between RS and MS. The non-mulched treatment had the lowest values of most studied characters except soil temperature where it was between BP and both of RS and MS. Temperature and moisture content of soil decrease as soil depth increase. Although RS or MS gave lower maize productivity than BP but they are inexpensive and available under Egyptian condition.

Key words

mulch treatments; soil temperature; soil moisture content; soil physical properties; maize productivity