Conservation tillage practices have been proposed as new practices to enhance soil fertility and to produce food from a dwindling land resource in this region, but wide adoption of these practices can occur only when the practices demonstrate a steady increase in agricultural production.
To compare the effects of tillage on corn yield, the structural equation modeling (SEM) was used in analyzing the relationships between maize growth/yield and soil properties (physical and chemical characteristics) based on a long-term (12 years) tillage study that included no tillage (NT), ridge tillage (RT) and conventional tillage (CT) practices.