International Journal of Environment, Agriculture and Biotechnology (IJEAB) Vol-3, Issue-3, May-June- 2018 http://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijeab/3.3.12 ISSN: 2456-1878 www.ijeab.com Page | 799 Performance of combined tillage equipment and it’s effect on soil properties Ayad J. ALkhafaji 1 , Abdulaziz A. Almosawi 2 , Kamal M. Alqazzaz 1 1 Agricultural Mechanization Faculty of Agriculture , University in Kufa, Iraq iyad.alkhafaji@uokufa.edu.iq 2 Alforat Alawsat Tech. University, Diwania Technical Institute, Iraq Abstract—An experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of a locally manufactured combined tillage implement (moldboard plow + ripper) in one of the fields of the kufa university faculty of agriculture. The experiment was included two factors , the first factor is combing the ripper to mold board plow in five level these are fixing the combined ripper shanks while the shanks points oriented in two different levels with and opposite to the plowing direction , two levels of different ripper depths the same depth and 5 cm above the depth of mold board plow share and the fifth level is control treatment ( mold board plow alone ) .The second factor was the plowing operation speed at five levels (1.4, 2.0 , 3.6 and 4.7) Km.hr ̵ ¹ . the experiment was conducted as a factorial experiment with RCBD , the LSD test at 5 % was used to compare between means .The results of the research were showed that combining the locally manufactured ripper implement to mold board plow resulted in significant increase in the number of soil clods with the desired diameter (5-10 cm ) very low number of soil block with diameter larger than 10 cm , more even soil roughness and the actual productivity has not decreased to the extent that it affects the efficient performance of the tillage process compared to the use at the mold board plow alone . Keywords—combination ,tillage, soil, roughness, ripper , moldboard. I. INTRODUCTION Now a days, the conventional tillage practices are very expensive in cost , more time consuming and higher number of passes which cause soil compaction. Furthermore; conventional tillage is considered to be one of the low fuel-efficient operation. Digman 2012 mentioned that only 20% of diesel fuel energy is available at the tractors drawbar, however, only 4% out of that energy is converted in to breaking up the soil . Therefore , it is so important to find out an early way leading to get the most out of tillage operation , one way to bypass these problems is the use of combined tillage implements in one field operation. This practice is useful only for those who prefer the use of conventional tillage practices such as the Iraqi farmers. Manjeet et al. 2016 defined the combined tillage is the way in which two or more implements operates at the same time in order to manipulate the soil. In general sense, combined tillage means integrated management of resources such as time, energy, fuel, labor, soil and water conservation, on the other hand, increasing yield and better utilize of natural resources. It also contributes and sustained agriculture production. Nasr et al 2016divided the combined agricultural implements intofive groups these are:1-Soil preparation.2-soil preparation andfertilizing. 3-soil preparation ,fertilizing and seeding. 4-soil preparation and seeding. 5-fertilizing and seeding. For each of thefive groups mentioned they suggested two or more operations e.g the third group mentioned above has three operations these are plowing , fertilizing and seeding ;tilling , fertilizing and seeding and cultivating fertilizing and seeding. Grisso et al (2012) revealed that combined implements operations reduce fuel consumption, time and labor requirements by limiting at least one individual trip over the field. Javadi et al. 2006 , Asgill 2008 and Manjeet et al 2016 revealed that combination tillage implements were more energy efficient , higher tillage performance index (TPI) and saving nearly 50% in cost and 50 _55% in timecompared with the same single passive tillage implement . Moitzi et al. 2014 revealed that the area – specific fuel consumption increased linearly with working depth for moldboard plow and short disc harrow , but disproportionately for subsoil . Wheel slip was also found to increase fuel consumption and decrease field capacity performance at all depth . The concept of combination tillage practice was entered into force for the primary and secondary tillage operations since hundred year ago (Shafee 1995), but is still not widespread even in places where this application is needed , such as rice cultivation in southern Iraq . Theobjectives of this research were to investigate the performance of the developed combined implement in terms of it effect on : 1- Improving soil refined and surface uniformity . 2- Saving time and fuel consumption .