Abstract
Eight field trials were conducted under rainfed conditions at Ras El-Hekma (10 km inland), 56 Km east of Marsa Matrouh at the Northwest coastal zone of Egypt, during four rainfall winter seasons (2003/04, 2004/05, 2005/06 and 2006/07). This study aimed to find out the optimum tillage system to develop and sustainable of rainfed cultivation of wheat and barley. The obtained results could be summarized as follows:
Results of the present experiments evaluated the yield and yield attributes for each of barley and wheat in experimental area follow the amount of rainfall precipitation. Since, barley used rain water more efficiency than wheat. Barley had a higher yield and its attributes as compared with wheat. Also, tillage systems of traditional tillage after rain precipitation (TTAR) and conservational tillage after rain precipitation (CTAR) had higher water use efficiency (WUE) than the other tried tillage systems. Accordingly, the highest values of yield and yield attributes for both cases of wheat and barley and the sustainability production of winter cereal crops could be secured in varied rainfall seasons with the application of CTAR or TTAR system. Economically, barley recorded the highest values of gross return (GR), net return (NR) and average rate of return (ARR) than wheat overall seasons of this study. Also, the highest these values were recorded when CTAR was applied throughout the four seasons in the case of barley and in the latter three seasons in case of wheat. However, the partial budget analysis concluded that conservation tillage system applied after rain precipitation (CTAR) was favorable tillage system economically for barley and for wheat particularly in the rainy seasons. Therefore, barley could be the favorable winter crop economically more than wheat under rainfed conditions such as the region of Ras El-Hekma at the Northwest coast of Egypt.