Weed Diversity, Abundance, and Seedbank in Differently Tilled Faba Bean (Vicia faba L.) Cultivations

Differently tilled faba bean cultivations, in particular, require a comprehensive study of weed diversity, abundance, and seedbank due to the lack of experimental data. Therefore, in 2016-2018, field trials were conducted at Vytautas Magnus University on the basis of a long-term tillage experiment. Conventional deep and shallow plowing, deep chiseling, shallow disking, and no-tillage systems were investigated. According to the results of the investigations, the air temperature and amount of precipitation during the vegetative season had a greater influence on the total number of weeds (r = 0.538 and 0.833 p > 0.05) than the types of tillage systems investigated. However, on average, a reduction in tillage intensity did not change the weed number, especially in disked and not tilled plots. On average, the biomass of weeds varied little between the treatments (from 105.9 to 125.7 g m(-2)) and mainly depended on the volume of forecrop residues (r(annual) = -0.982 p <= 0.01 and r(perennial) = 0.890 p <= 0.05). Higher total weed seedbanks were found in the disked (+43.0%) and not tilled (+21.6%) soils compared to deeply plowed ones. The weed seedbank was almost similarly distributed between the treatments, irrespective of the tillage depth and method used.

Automated summary

The study focused on different tillage methods for faba bean cultivations, finding that air temperature and precipitation during the vegetative season had a greater impact on weed numbers than the types of tillage systems. Reduced tillage intensity did not lead to changes in weed numbers, which were mainly influenced by the volume of forecrop residues.