Changes in Soil Quality through Conservation Agriculture in North-Eastern Italy

Conservation Agriculture includes practices focused on the conservation and the restoration of main soil features, such as organic carbon content, structure, and biological diversity and activity. Our study was conducted in three farms in North-Eastern Italy in pairs of closely located fields to compare conservation agriculture (no tillage, cover cropping) with conventional agriculture. Differences in terms of soil enzymatic activity, such as FDA and β-glucosidase through spectrophotometric analyses, microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen contents, total organic carbon, and nitrogen contents with CNS Elemental Analyzer and soil arthropod community via the QBS-ar index were investigated. Enzymatic activities resulted to be readily and positively affected by conservation agriculture whereas total and microbial carbon, nitrogen contents, and microarthropod community seemed to be more dependent on the time factor. The responses to conservation agriculture differed between the three farms, pointing out that differences in soil features may drive the effectiveness of conservation management. N stock, maybe dependent on previous soil management, might be the key characteristic able to influence soil evolution in the studied conditions. The present results could be helpful to predict soil reaction to sustainable agriculture in short periods.