EVALUATION OF SOIL ATTRIBUTES IN DIFFERENT MANAGEMENT AND USE SYSTEMS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Abstract

Soil can be defined as a medium capable of storing and providing water and nutrients for plant cultivation. Soil management can be defined as the set of all practices applied to soil for agricultural production. Including cultivation operations, cultural practices, amendment and fertilization practices. Soil conservation includes the use of vegetation cover, the adoption of crop rotation systems, the application of erosion control techniques, such as the construction of terraces and contour lines and the practice of minimum cultivation. Among the main types of soil management we have direct planting systems, conventional management, crop-livestock system, minimum cultivation, crop-livestock-forest integration. It is understood that adequate soil management is essential to guarantee the sustainability of agricultural production. Thus, the objective was to evaluate the physical attributes in different soil use and management systems. The experiment was conducted on a farm located in the municipality of Tibagi-PR, evaluating the characteristics of soil density, total porosity, resistance to penetration and water retention capacity for areas with different types of soil management. 10 collections were carried out in each area analyzed. The data were subjected to analysis of variance, Tukey's cluster test. The results obtained demonstrated that the crop-livestock system had better results in the surface layer of the soil. However, the analysis of variance showed that there was no significant difference between the treatments, possibly due to the age of installation of the analyzed direct planting being recent.