For many years one of the goals of tillage research at Virginia Polytechnic Institute has been to develop a system which (a) reduces the amount of tillage required, (b) maintains an open-sail structure conducive to good rainfall intake and storage, and ( c) makes more beneficial use of the residues of preceding crops for minimizing evaporation, soil erosion and runoff losses. From these investigations evolved the no-tillage system. With this system the crop is planted directly into a chemically killed sod or crop residue with no prior mechanical seedbed preparation, thereby utilizing vegetation from the preceding crop for surface mulch.

V. O. Shanholtz and J. H. Lillard