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Abstract:

One of the factors affecting the sustainable soil water management is agricultural activity, which leads to a change in the soil hydro-physical parameters through land use. The benefits of subsoiling silty loam soils are extant in the literature, but detailed studies of subsoiling effects on soil hydro-physical quality (SHPQ) are limited. The field experiments were conducted on arable land in two regions of southern Poland: i) the Racibórz County (5 measuring points) and ii) the Krakow County (3 measuring points) from 2012 to 2015, to study the effect of subsoiling to a depth of 0.50 m and conventional tillage on the SHPQ. For each of the selected measuring points undisturbed and disturbed soil sampling were taken. The SHPQ parameters included bulk density (BD), total organic carbon content (TOC), air capacity (AC), plant-available water capacity (PAW), relative field capacity (RFC), structural stability index (StI), the Dexter's index of soil physical quality (S) and saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks), which was obtained from in-situ measured. Statistical analyses showed two main groups of SHPQ indicators, of which the most sensitive on soil subsoiling were the BD and Ks values. In general, after soil subsoiling significantly decreased (P<0.05) of the BD values was observed in topsoil and subsoil layers, and additionally significantly increased of the S index and Ks values but only in surface layers of soil.