By Maria Balota
Research at the North Carolina State University showed that peanut yields were lower when planted on fine-textured soiled in strip tillage in comparison with conventional tillage. Yield reduction appeared to be associated with greater pod loss in the digging process for the strip versus conventional tillage. Use of stale seedbeds, by bedding rows without other tillage operations sometime after the harvest of previous crop and 4 to 6 weeks prior to planting peanut, was further proposed as a tillage practice that could alleviate yield reduction due to strip tillage. Research using corn, cotton and grain sorghum as rotation crops showed that, indeed, depending on year and location peanut yielded greater in stale seedbed and strip tilled land versus just strip-tilled soil. For example, in 2006 at Rocky Mount, NC, when soil was bedded and strip tilled, pod yield was 3620 pounds per acre, significantly more than 2570 pounds per acre when peanut was planted directly into stripped soil and crop stubble. However, similar responses were not observed in 2002 at either Lewiston or Rocky Mount; which probably denotes that more research is needed to document if stale beds in crop stubbles and in strip tillage peanut production work. According with these researchers, peanut yield in longer rotations was higher than yield of shorter rotation, but the rotation crop had no effect. The full article is here peanut-notes-2017-no-23-peanut-strip-tilled-into-grain-sorghum-stubble.