ABSTRACT
Tillage practices include plowing, chiseling, disking, harrowing, leveling, cultivating, ridging, and subsoiling. Ancient Africans, American Indians, Arabs, Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, and Romans often had rather sophisticated agricultural systems that used many of these practices. Minimum tillage has become important to modem agriculture in recent years. Today's modern no-tillage or minimum tillage systems depend heavily on the use of herbicides. Traditional farmers for centuries have been using agricultural systems similar to minimum or no-tillage systems. A number of fungal pathogens survive in crop residues in minimum tillage systems; however, minimum tillage may increase, decrease, or have no effect on plant diseases. Tillage practices directly influence physical and chemical properties of the soil, soil moisture and temperature, root growth, and nutrient uptake, and populations of vectors of plant pathogens. A combination of rotation with minimum tillage probably does the best job of managing plant diseases.
