The Effect of Tillage and Pudding on Some Soil Physical Properties and Rice Yield in Paddy Lands (Case study: Ghaemshahr City)

Tillage and puddling are important operations of paddy field. Puddling is an important and common method in bed preparation for rice seedling cultivation in paddy lands, which is done with rotavator. To investigate the changes in soil physical and hydraulic parameters, an experiment was conducted as a split plot based on a randomized complete block design with three replications in Ghaemshahr, Iran. In this study, the rice field was under two main treatments, T1 (without tillage) and T2 (with tillage) and four sub-treatments of passing the rotavator, P1 (once), P2 (twice), P3 (three times) and P4 (four Times). Different levels of puddling on the paddy field with loam texture were applied and the parameters of infiltration, hydraulic conductivity, gravimetric water contents and dry soil bulk density were measured. Also, at the end of the cultivation season, 1000-grain rice weight was calculated for each treatment. The results showed that in both parameters of permeability and hydraulic conductivity, the T2 treatments had the lowest amount of infiltration and hydraulic conductivity. Also, in both parameters, with increasing the intensity of puddling, the rate of infiltration and hydraulic conductivity decreased significantly.  By applying tillage and increasing the intensity of puddling, a decreasing trend in the bulk density and an increasing trend in soil water content were observed. So that, the tillage treatment with high puddling (P4) had the maximum weight moisture (28.67 %). Different tillage methods did not show any effect on the weight of 1000-grains rice. In contrast, different puddling treatments had a significant effect on the weight of 1000-grains rice and in high puddling treatment the highest weight of 1000-grains rice (28.38 g) was observed showing the positive effect of high levels of puddling on this parameter. Finally, it can be concluded that tillage and puddling reduce water loss and thus increase water productivity in the rice cultivation.