Proceedings of the 2022 Mississippi Water Resources Conference

Year: 2022 Authors: Rix J.P., Lo T.H., Gholson D.M., Singh G., Rudnick D.R.

Seven different soil management treatments categorized as biological, chemical, and mechanical are being tested as possible remedies for reoccurring surface sealing on Mississippi Delta loam soils. The treatments include conventional tillage, medium-term no-till, new no-till with gypsum, cereal rye, subsoiling, polyacrylamide (PAM), and furrow diking. In 2021, field-satiated hydraulic conductivity was measured by single ring infiltrometer tests for two treatments, medium-term no-till and conventional tillage, in June and October. Analysis of variance suggested no significant difference between the two treatments in terms of mean natural logarithm of field-satiated hydraulic conductivity. 2021 rainfed corn grain yield results were subjected to Fisher's Least Significant Difference test. Furrow diking and PAM were found to be higher and statistically different than no-till with respect to mean yield. Future work will include single ring infiltrometer tests on four treatments: cereal rye, PAM, subsoiling, and conventional tillage.