Welcome to the ISTRO website
On this site you will find information about the International Soil Tillage Research Organisation (ISTRO), which focusses on the impact and consequences of various soil tillage (including no-till) practices and from field traffic. More information about the organisation itself can be found on the organisation page.
Activities organised by ISTRO and other organisations concerning soil tillage can be found on the activities page.
Further information about recent publications are found on the publications page.
2nd Central European ISTRO Conference
- Published: 07 February 2020 07 February 2020
The Czech branch of ISTRO is organising the second Central European ISTRO Conference. The conference will be held from 8-10 September 2020 in Brno, Czech Republic.
The conference is covering the following topics:
- Soil health assessment
- Soil management
- Integrated pest management
- Precision agriculture
A brochure with information about the conference can be downloaded HERE.
More information about the conference: submission of abstracts, registration, etc. can be found on the conference website.
ISTRO info October 2019
- Published: 11 November 2019 11 November 2019
November 11th 2019 - The latest version of ISTRO info, the October 2019 issue, is available for download.
In this issue:
- Editorial: Soils on the agenda
- Sharing World Soil Day experiences
- Blair McKenzie co-editor of Soil & Tillage Research
- News on Soil and Tillage Research
- Dr (Bob) Zhiwei Zeng awarded 3-year membership
- Vacant PhD positions at University of Guelph
- Upcoming Meetings and Events
- News books
In the picture on the left Bruce Ball (l) and Blair Mckenzie (r) doing visual soil evaluation.
Blair has accepted the position of co-editor of Journal Soil and Tillage Research, next to his research position at the James Hutton Institute.
Blair about becoming co-editor: "I hope that adding the co-editorship Soil & Tillage Research to my role in ISTRO can work for the good of both parties. I have always believed that the strong link with Soil & Tillage Research was one of the scientific strengths of ISTRO. The combination of a research organisation and a scientific journal is something that is not common and delivers important synergy. Along with the other editors of Soil & Tillage Research, I will be looking to the ISTRO community to continue to contribute to this link by responding positively to invitations to conduct reviews for the journal whenever possible. If anyone wants to contact me on this or anything to do with ISTRO, you are always welcome."
Thesis of James Barr added to ISTRO website
- Published: 06 September 2019 06 September 2019
September 6th, 2019 - The PhD thesis of James Barr has been added to the Dissertation repository of the ISTRO website, and can be downloaded in the disserations section. James has defended his thesis in June 2018. He has presented his thesis content on the ISTRO conference in Paris in 2018. The thesis has the title 'Optimising bentleg opener geometry for higher speed no-till seeding'.
The introduction of the thesis reads: Narrow openers commonly used in Australian no-tillage seeding operations cause excessive soil disturbance which typically limit speed to 8-9 km h-1. In this thesis, the low disturbance bentleg opener is investigated for its use in high speed no-tillage seeding. The discrete element method (DEM) of modelling is used to optimise performance and develop bentleg openers for integrated use in bentleg seeding systems.