Non-sustainable of no-till agriculture for soil carbon storage increase

<title>Abstract</title> Improved management of agricultural soils plays a critical role in mitigating climate change and achieving the Agricultural Sustainable Development Goals.. We studied the temporal effects of the adoption of no-tillage (NT) management, often touted as an important carbon sequestration strategy, on soil organic carbon (SOC) storage in surface and subsurface soil layers by performing a meta-analysis of 1061 pairs of published experimental data comparing NT and conventional tillage (CT). In the early years of adoption, NT increased surface (0-10 cm) SOC storage compared to CT but reduced it in deeper layers leading to a decrease of SOC in the entire soil profile. These NT-driven SOC losses diminished over time and the net change was approaching zero at 14 years. Our findings demonstrate that NT is not a “silver bullet” for drawing down atmospheric CO₂ and regenerating the lost SOC in cropping soils globally and highlight the importance of long-term NT for the recovery of initial SOC losses.