Yield and profitability of various crops with different methods of soil preparation

In a series of trials at ten locations in southern and eastern Germany in 1994 1999, four different tillage methods were tested for their ap-plicability to sugar beet rotations. The average for all locations and years showed no differences in recoverable sugar between plough-ing, light tillage and mulch tillage. Owing to a lower plant density, direct seeding of sugar beet had a clearly lower yield. Total sugar beet production costs were lower with the plough-less methods. Tak-ing into account yield and total costs, there were only negligible dif-ferences in profitability between ploughing, light tillage and mulch tillage, whereas direct seeding was clearly less profitable. The grain yield of winter wheat was also not affected by the method of soil preparation, except in the case of direct seeding. The latter was found to result in a slight decline in yield. In the plough-less treatments, lower plant and ear densities were offset by a greater number of grains per ear and a tendency towards a higher thousand-grain mass. Compared with conventional tillage, the plough-less methods of pro-ducing winter wheat achieved a markedly higher profitability.