From isjd@ars-grin.gov Tue Aug 24 10:11:39 1999 Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 08:35:12 -0300 From: ARS News Service To: ARS News List Subject: Scientific Help for Tennessee Valley Soils NEWS RELEASE: USDA Researchers Help Farmers Preserve Tennessee Valley Soils ----------- ARS News Service Agricultural Research Service, USDA Tara Weaver-Missick, (301) 504-1619, tweaver@asrr.arsusda.gov August 24, 1999 ----------- Auburn, Ala., Aug. 24--U.S. Department of Agriculture and Auburn University scientists are teaming up on a joint project to help cotton growers correct soil problems in the Tennessee Valley, which includes Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. "Although the land is very fertile, the soils in this area are heavily eroded and heavily compacted, and plant roots don't extend very deep into the soil," said Agricultural Research Service Administrator Floyd P. Horn. "About 60 percent of the soil in the Valley is highly erodible. Years of conventional tillage, coupled with little crop rotation, have severely depleted the soil organic matter, in some areas to less than 1 percent." Conservation agronomist Ben Moore with USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service in Troy, Ala., has worked with Valley farmers to help them comply with conservation management alternatives required by the Food Security Act of 1985. Growers who followed these conservation practices in earlier years had reduced yields. "That's mainly because crops previously grown under conservation tillage were not as competitive as those grown under conventional tillage," Moore said. Agronomist D. Wayne Reeves and agricultural engineer Randy L. Raper, with ARS' National Soil Dynamics Laboratory, in Auburn, Ala., were asked to help growers develop soil management systems that would protect the soil from erosion, which also allows them to maintain or improve cotton yields, reduce input costs and improve soil quality. In field studies, Reeves found deep tilling to 17 inches and planting a rye cover crop in fall increases yields and reduces soil compaction. Three-year average yields for this system were about 1,040 pounds of lint per acre. "Our best conservation tillage treatment gave yields that were 14 percent higher than conventional tillage and 18 percent higher than no tillage without using a cover crop, the system Tennessee Valley farmers adopted when they first went to conservation tillage," Reeves said. "At current prices for cotton, fall deep tillage in combination with a rye cover crop paid for itself more than three times over." An in-depth article appears in the August issue of Agricultural Research magazine. The story is also on the World Wide Web at: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/aug99/tenn0899.htm ---------- Scientific contacts: D. Wayne Reeves and Randy L. Raper, ARS National Soil Dynamics Laboratory, Auburn, Ala., phone (334) 844-4666 [Reeves], (334) 844-4654 [Raper], wreeves@acesag.auburn.edu, rlraper@eng.auburn.edu. ---------- This item is one of the news releases and story leads that ARS Information distributes on weekdays to fax and e-mail subscribers. You can also get the latest ARS news on the World Wide Web at http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/thelatest.htm. * Feedback and questions to ARS News Service via e-mail: isnv@ars-grin.gov. * ARS Information Staff, 5601 Sunnyside Ave., Room 1-2251, Beltsville MD 20705-5128, (301) 504- 1617, fax 504-1648.