Progress report

1. INTEGRATED DROUGHT MANAGEMENT PROGRAME
(IDM CEE)
Progress Report
Work package : Demonstration Projects (WP 5)
(
Activity : Drought management by agricultural practices and measures
increasing of soil water holding capacity (5.1.)
Mileston 1 : Set up of experiments. Start of the theoretical study
Participated countries: CZ, PL, SK, SL
presented by
Pavol Bielek (SK)
activity leader

2. Targets of the Activity 5.1
To propose some different farming methods for soil
water holding capacity increase as measures for
water regimes improvement in agricultural land

3. Why is it necessary?
. Soil is important reservoir of water in the country (e.g. in Sovakia it is
about 30 % from the total annual raifall, third water resource for the country).
. The
share of agricultural land in total areas of the countries is
about 40 % in OECD countries, about 50 % in EU-15 and almost
60 % in the Central European Countries.
. The water infiltration into the soil profile is decreasing due to
several recently used farming systems.
. Not infiltrated water into the soil is potential water for the floods.
. This activity want something to do for prevention and repairment
of existing deteriorated status of the soils.

4. SET UP OF EXPERIMENTS
. Subsoiled fields and traditionaly used fields in different soil ecological
conditions (SK, CZ).
.Ploughed fields with green manure application (CZ).
.Ploughed fied with farmyard manure application (CZ)
.Field measurements of saturated hydraulic conductivity by double ring
infiltrometer (CZ)
.Field penetrometric study of subsoiled and non subsoiled soils (SK)
.Field infiltration experiments by water saturation of soils (SK).
. Preliminary yield evaluation of cultivated plants.
.Field experiment on impacts of two tillage systems use (conventional and
simplified) (PL)
.

5. Field experiments in two different places with conservation tillage in
comparison to conventional mouldboard ploughing (SL)
. Long-term field experiments focused on comparison of composting
tillage to traditional mouldboard ploughing (SL).
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Moreover many kinds of laboratory measurements have been done.
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Another activities : knowledge collections
public awarenes increase by newspaper article

6. Results :
. Subsoiling increased conditions for water infiltration
into the deeper layers of soils (penetrometric study)
. Higher water infiltration have been proved by
infiltration experiments.
. Higher yields of plants have been preliminary achieved
after of subsoiling.
. Increase of the water infiltration into the soil after
applied organic fertilizers has not been disproved.
. Mouldboard and composting tillage positively affected
the water regime of soils.

7. Implementation Plan
for the next 6 months (from plan of the Mileston 2)
1. Existing and new experiments observations, data
collections and evaluations.
2. Common theoretical rewiev and first results
presentations.
3. Small leaflet presentation for better awarenes of this
problem (for farmers and decission makers).

8. National reports by participating countries
are enclosed

9. Thank you
pavol.bielek@gmail.com