Amitava Chatterjee, NDSU Department of Soil Sciences
Aaron Daigh, NDSU Department of Soil Sciences
This long term tile drainage was located at Ron Holiday’s farm near Casselton, ND and it was initiated in summer 2013. We are comparing interactive effect of drainage (control- and open-tiled, surface drain only), crop rotation (continuous corn and corn-soybean), and tillage (chisel, strip and no-till) on corn production. In another experiment, different tile spacings (30, 40 and 50 ft) and depth (3 and 4 ft) were compared to find out which tile depth and spacing combination has the potential to maximize the yield. This year, we observed that corn-soybean rotation had higher yield than continuous corn irrespective of drainage treatment.
Under tiled drainage, chisel plow had a higher yield than no-till; but under surface-drained condition, no-till had higher yield than chisel for both rotation. For tile-spacing and-depth experiment, surface drained had the highest yield, whereas the lowest yield was observed under tile with 50 ft spacing and 4-ft depth. From both experiments, it was evident that high rainfall intensity might increase the nitrate leaching loss and resulted into yield loss under tile drained condition.