Soil layer displacing plough

Part 3: Black and brown soils

Abstract

Black soil and brown soil are special soil group containing clay and sandy loam respectively in the P. R. of China. As one of the main corn (maize) and peanut belts in the world respectively, the areas suffer from continuous cropping injury due to continuous planting. To improve conditions, it is recommended that the top soil and subsoil should be displaced and crop residue on the soil surface should be buried into the subsoil to retain the rainwater. These can be accomplished with a special plough which we designed and built. The results show that after operation, about 70% of the dark top soil fell down to the 700 mm depth. The crop residue was buried at a depth of 300–400 mm. A total draught of this plough was measured at 39.5 kN on the black soil field and 29.8 kN on the brown soil field including the tractor running resistance.