A STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF AN EIGHT-PURPOSE COMPOUND MACHINE ON SOME PHYSICAL SOIL PROPERTIES

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of a locally developed and assembled eight-purpose compound equipment on some physical soil properties in a silty clay loam soil in one of the fields of the College of Agricultural Engineering Sciences/University of Baghdad/Al-Jadriyah for the spring growing season of 2023. The experiment used, the MF-650 Tractor.  The study included two factors: the first factor had three seed rates 3, 4, and 5 kg donum^-1, and the second factor had three tillage depths of 15, 20, and 25 cm, have been studied the bulk density of the soil, soil moisture content, germination rate, number of fallen seeds, and percentage of broken grains. The experiment used a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with split-plot arrangement and three replications. The least significant difference (LSD) at a significance level of 0.05 was used to compare the means of the treatments. The results indicate significant differences in the physical soil properties due to plowing depth and seeding rate. A plowing depth of 15 cm resulted in the soil՚s lowest bulk density, reaching 1.02 µg m^-3. It also resulted in the lowest soil moisture content (12.69%), germination rate (68.83%), and percentage of broken seeds (3.77%). The results indicated no significant differences in the physical soil properties due to the seeding rate and no significant interaction in the physical soil properties between plowing depth and seeding rate.