Visual Evaluation of Soil Structure in Maize and Forage Grasses Intercropping under No-Tillage

ABSTRACT

Abstract The objective was to undertake the visual evaluation of soil structure in maize and forage grasses intercropping under no-tillage. The experiment was carried out in a rural property located in North Paraná State, Brazil, where there were five parallel areas with the following treatments maize + Urochloa brizantha cv. Marandu (T1), maize + Urochloa brizantha cv. Piatã (T2), maize + Urochloa brizantha cv. Xaraés (T3), maize + Urochloa ruziziensis (T4), and non-intercropping maize (T5). Seeds of forage grasses were sown in April 5th, 2018 and sampling was carried out in December, 30th, 2018. Samples of 0.10 m width, 0.20 m length, and 0.25 m thickness were collected from five random locations of each experimental area and, for the visual evaluation of soil structural quality, a soil evaluation (VESS) chart was used so that visual scores were attributed to each sample. Treatments 1 and 5 received the highest scores, while treatment 3 had the lowest score and showed good structural quality and great root presence. At the superficial layer, treatment 2 had the lowest score (0.8) among treatments. For the subsuperficial layer, the scores obtained were higher than those found for the superficial layer T3 had the lowest mean (1.5) and was significantly similar to T4 that presented a mean score of 1.7. Except for T1, which showed a similar score to non-intercropping maize (T5), the forage grasses had better visual scores. The visual evaluation of soil structure indicated that maize and forage grasses intercropping improves soil structural quality.