Abstract
ABSTRACT Adequate soil managements and use of agricultural machinery are essential for the economic viability of these practices and for the environmental preservation. In this context, sowing and fertilizer application practices are the most important activities, since they affect crop development and present high energy demand. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the energy demand of a tractor-planter-fertilizer unit for the sowing of common bean seeds in no-tillage system as a function of three soil water contents (28.7, 36.4, and 47.6%) and three soil fertilizer placement depths (0.06; 0.11 and 0.15 m). The final common bean grain yield was also evaluated. The lowest energy demand was found for the highest soil water content combined with the lowest soil fertilizer placement depth. The highest common bean grain yield was found for plants under soil water content of 36.4% and fertilizer placement depth of 0.11 m, reaching 4,186 kg ha-1.
Highlights
Soil water content and soil fertilizer placement depth stand out among these factors, since they affect fuel consumption by agricultural machinery; these variables are essential for the crop establishment
The plots consisted of three soil water contents (28.7%, 36.4, and 47.6%) and the subplots consisted of three fertilizer placement depths (0.06, 0.11, and 0.15 m)
Soil resistance to penetration is a useful variable to understand the crop development (Peigné et al, 2018); it is strongly affected by the soil water content (Hamza & Anderson, 2005)
Summary
Inappropriate use of agricultural machinery and soil management practices results in losses for crop producers and for the environment, such as decreases in crop grain yield, and increases in production costs and greenhouse gas emissions.The optimization of the energy demanded by the agricultural machinery is one of the alternatives for solving these problems; since fuel consumption impacts the total production cost and greenhouse gas emissions (Tricai et al, 2016; Cavalcante et al, 2019; Farias et al, 2019).The process combining sowing and fertilizer application is one of the main agricultural practices, since it affects the crop development and grain yield (Gabriel Filho et al, 2010). Inappropriate use of agricultural machinery and soil management practices results in losses for crop producers and for the environment, such as decreases in crop grain yield, and increases in production costs and greenhouse gas emissions. Soil water content and soil fertilizer placement depth stand out among these factors, since they affect fuel consumption by agricultural machinery; these variables are essential for the crop establishment. Deeper soil layers are usually more compacted and resistant to penetration, resulting in high energy consumption (Mahl et al, 2008; Drescher et al, 2011) In such situation, financial gains from increase in grain yield would decrease by increases in the fuel consumed in these agricultural practices
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