Zonal technology treatment of the soil system for rice cultivation comprised various operations carried out with tillage equipment types in the Kyzylorda Region, Kazakhstan. With the region’s agriculture sector having a low technical base, the performance of these operations is mostly meager, which does not justify itself in the modern conditions of the agro-industrial complex’s functioning. The presented studies sought to determine the influence of different tillage tools on the soil’s plowing quality, agrophysical properties, and rice productivity, carried out at the Kazakh Scientific Research Institute of Rice Growing, named after I. Zhakhaev, Kazakhstan. The study observed the use of a “Lemken Juwel-7 reversible plough” contributed to achieving a ridge ratio of 1.09 due to the uniform size and shape of the layers. The reversible plough provided the smallest area occupied by clods bigger than 5 cm (0.16 m²). Notably, fall-plowed soil disking, mineral fertilizers’ incorporation, followed by soil rolling under rice with the BDM-‘Agro’ disk harrow and the Horsch Terrano 4 FX cultivator positively affected the structural and aggregate composition of the soil before rice planting. Using the Lemken Juwel 7 reversible plough and the Horsch Terrano 4 FX cultivator in the meadow-boggy soil treatment system contributed an average increase of 0.71 t/ha in rice yield under the environmental conditions of Kyzylorda Region, Kazakhstan. Employing these tillage units makes obtaining the maximum amount of agrotechnical soil fractions possible, positively affecting the field germination of seeds and rice grain yield.

Keywords: Rice, soil system, tillage equipment, structural and aggregate composition of soil, structural coefficient, tillage tools, yield

Key findings: Results revealed the most effective field practice was autumn plowing with the reversible plow of the ‘Lemken Juwel 7 type,’ disk plowing and mineral fertilizers’ incorporation, and rolling of the field with BDM-‘Agro’ and Horsch Terrano FX cultivators in the Aral Sea region, Kazakhstan, for all the studied variants for cultivating rice on meadow-marsh soils. These tillage units provided the maximum amount of agronomically valuable fractions in the surface layer of the ground, positively affecting rice seed germination and yield. However, other tillage methods considerably reduced agronomically beneficial segments.