Manal Othman*⁽¹⁾  Ayman Shehada AL-Ouda⁽¹⁾ and Muhammad Manhal AL-Zoubi⁽³⁾         

(1).Department of Field Crops, Faculty of Agriculture, Damascus University, Damascus, Syria.

(2). Administration of Water Resources, General Commssion for Scientific Agricultural Reseach GCSAR, Damascus, Syria.

(*Corresponding author: Eng. Manal Othman. E-Mail: manalosman709@gmail.com).

Received: 16/01/2020                               Accepted: 06/02/2020

Abstract

The research was conducted at Izra’a Research Station, General Commission for Scientific Agricultural Research (GCSAR), during the growing seasons (2016/2017and 2017/2018), in order to evaluate the response of two durum wheat verities (Douma3 and Cham5) and two bread wheat varieties (Douma₄ and Cham₆) to Conservation Agriculture (CA) as a full package compared with Conventional Tillage system (CT) under rainfed condition using lentils (Variety Edleb₃) in the applied crop rotation. The experiment was laid according to split-split RCBD with three replications. The average number of grains per square meter was significantly higher under conservation agriculture in the presence of crop rotation, when all the crop residues where left on the soil surface (Barley residues) in the variety Cham₅ (3070 grain/ m²). The average of fertile to total tillers, 1000-kernel weight and grain yield were, significantly higher under conservation agriculture in the presence of crop rotation, of the variety Douma₃ (71.27%, 33.549g, 4162 kg/ ha respectively ). soil organic matter content was significantly higher during the second and first growing seasons, under conservation agriculture, in plots in which crop rotation was applied, at the soil depth (0 – 20 cm) (0. 7483, 0. 6983%  respectively). The two varieties Douma₃ and Cham₆ are considered more responsive to conservation agriculture system in the southern region of Syria, because they recorded the highest grain yields (2561and 2385 kg/ ha respectively) compared with the other studied varieties (Cham₅ and Douma₄) (1951 and 1724 kg/ ha respectively).

Key words: Conservation Agriculture, Conventional Tillage, Crop residues, Crop rotation, Wheat, Organic matter.

Full paper in Arabic: PDF