Effect of the developed moldboard plow on the pulverization index of soil under various forward speeds

A field experiment was conducted at the Agricultural Research Station, College of Agriculture, University of Basrah, Karmat Ali site. To study the effect of the developed moldboard plow to pulverization index of soil. The experiment was designed according to a complete randomized block design using the split-split plot method in a factorial experiment with three factors (two types of moldboards, three additions of finned harrows and three levels of forward speeds). Add-ing fins to the moldboard significantly affected the soil pulverization index, with the finned mold-board (M2) achieving a lower index of 33.95 mm compared to the traditional plow (M1) at 47.84 mm. Needle harrows also influenced soil fragmentation, where double fins harrows (H2) achieved the lowest pulverization index of 23.13 mm, followed by single needle harrows (H1) at 32.59 mm, while no harrows (H0) had the highest index at 66.96 mm. Increased forward speed reduced the pulverization index from 46.49 mm at 1.5 km/h to 36.06 mm at 3.5 km/h. The combination of for-ward speed and needle harrows further impacted soil fragmentation. The lowest pulverization in-dex of 21.8 mm occurred with the finned plow and double fin harrows (M2*H2), while the tradi-tional plow without harrows (M1*H0) showed the highest index at 81.62 mm. The interaction of speed, plow type, and needle harrows (S3*M2*H2) yielded the lowest pulverization index of 18.48 mm, while the highest index, 86.26 mm, was recorded for the combination (S1*M1*H0).