April saw the preparation of the plots at Klapy ready for the sunflower sowing which took place on the April 12th using a Kinze 3600 precision drill machine with 12 two-disc drill coulters. At the same time N & P fertilizer Amofos (12 % N and 52 % P2O5 ) was applied at a dose of 100 kg per ha.
After drilling the whole experimental area was treated with a mix of the herbicides Guardian and Racer. Before emergence the roughness of surface in all variants was measured. Sunflower emergence was registered about April 27th and no differences among the individual plots were found. During May and June vegetation characteristics, soil properties and weed occurrence were observed and in the first half of June nitrogen fertilizer and later fungicide were applied.
From June 29 th to July 1st the international ISTRO conference took place in Brno which was attended by participants from 17 countries. The manager of the SOWAP project, Mike Lane , also took part in this conference explaining the aspects and intentions of the project. This lead to an interesting discussion on the influence of conservation soil tillage on soil erosion. On July 28th the Czech SOWAP team visited the erosion plots in Tulln , Austria . The members of the team saw the field experiments with sunflowers and a relatively simple and low-cost but very effective system of runoff catchment. Professor A. Klik from the Wiena University explained the results obtained to date and their interpretation.
Before harvest, during September, soil samples were taken for bulk density, soil structure, moisture content and nutrient status analyses. Some samples were analysed in the Czech laboratories and other were sent to Silsoe and the Bracknell laboratories. Surface roughness on individual plots was measured as was the covering of soil by post harvest residues, plants and weeds with the use of image analyse.
Twice within the vegetation cone penetration resistance was measured up to depth 0.5 m. Unfortunately, no heavy precipitation has occurred within the Klapy locality sufficient to cause runoff and erosion that could be measured in the tanks installed at the experimental plots.
Therefore results characterizing the process and consequences of water erosion in our field experiment have not been obtained. The Czech team will be doing rainfall simulations in the autumn. |
