Combining management practices to reduce sediment, nutrients, and herbicides in runoff

Best management practices have been recommended for controlling nutrient, herbicide, or sediment losses with surface runoff. This study was designed to determine the best overall combination of tillage and application practices to reduce surface losses from cropland. Runoff was collected from two Kansas sites in sorghum-soybean rotation during the 2001 to 2004 crop years and analyzed for bioavailable phosphorus (P), soluble P, total P, ammonium, nitrate, total nitrogen (N), sediment, atrazine, and metolachlor concentrations. No-till treatments consistently experienced higher runoff water volumes than the chisel/disk tillage system used to warm and dry these clay soils in the spring. For this reason the no-till treatments also had higher [...]