Abstract

Fathi Abdulkareem Omer, Dilsouz Noori Abbas, and Nahla Mohammed Saleem

Increasing yield per unit area with maintaining soil properties and preserving the ecosystem at the same time is the chief concern for agronomists all over the world. Field burning along with the history was considered a cheaper tool which is still use by most farmers for weed control in open fields. A study was therefore applied to investigate the effect of mulcher (subsurface tillage) and field burning on soil seedbank, soil properties, and performance of subsequent wheat crop under rainfed conditions of Duhok region. This study was conducted at the faculty of Agriculture and Forestry/University of Duhok during 2011-2012 growing season. The results indicated that both soil seedbank and field weed population were significantly increased by mulcher and decreased when the field was burnt in the summer; meanwhile, some soil properties such as balk density and porosity were improved by mulcher and were not or slightly affected by field burning. As for wheat growth and yield, excluding the number of tillers per plant (2.34) in field burning treatment, all other traits were not affected significantly by the factors under the study.