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Faced with declining soil fertility and the challenges of climate change, tillage practices in rainfed cotton systems have been improved to adapt to the pedoclimatic conditions of cotton-growing regions. The multiplicity of studies carried out on tillage practices in cotton-based cropping systems in different regions of the world calls for an interdisciplinary systematization of the different research directions, scales of analysis, and reference data used. The aim of this work is to systematically review the contributions of the various studies on tillage, presenting a synthesis of the diversity of practices and the scope of research and knowledge, and identifying the main areas of research according to cotton production regions. From an initial search of 707 articles, 111 met the eligibility criteria for this systematic review. Our analysis revealed that 97.8% of the articles were published between 1995 and 2023, and that most of the case studies were carried out in four climatic zones: subtropical (43.2%); temperate arid long-season and arid short-season with 22.5% and 19.0% respectively; and tropical (15.3%) identifying no-tillage, strip-tillage, and ridge-tillage as the main alternative tillage types to conventional tillage based on plowing. Most research on soil practices focused on soil fertility (40.5%) and cotton productivity (41.4%). These results suggest the need for future research to improve the implementation of agroecological tillage practices in less represented regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, and to ensure the sustainability of new technologies in developed countries.
