Long-term impact of no-till conservation agriculture on abundance and order diversity of soil macrofauna in continuous maize monocropping system

Abstract

Unsuitable soil management in agriculture is known to results in the deterioration of soil health and the decline of biodiversity. The experiment tested whether no-tillage with mulch (NT), could boost biological activity of soil macrofauna population in continuous maize monocropping system compared with rotational tillage with mulch (RT) and conventional tillage (CT). Soil macrofauna was sampled at the end of the 2014/2015 growing season using 25 × 25 × 25 cm steel monoliths. The mean density of individual orders was higher (p < 0.001) under NT (46%) and RT (38%) compared with CT (16%). However, the Shannon-Weaver index revealed that the diversity and evenness of orders were similar for all treatments. Macrofauna patterns revealed that NT and RT contained higher (p < 0.001) population of Isoptera and Diplopoda. Isoptera was 51% and 17% higher in NT than CT and RT, while in Diplopoda, NT was 39% and 2% higher than CT and RT, respectively. It was concluded that NT and RT systems favoured the development of macrofauna communities in the studied maize continuous monoculture cropping system but did not favour order diversity of macrofauna. This suggests the importance of crop rotation for the development of the more diverse macrofaunal population.

Keywords

• conservation agriculture
• macrofauna diversity
• shannon-weaver index
• soil invertebrates