Pasture grazing intensity and presence or absence of cattle dung input and its relationships to soybean nutrition and yield in integrated crop–livestock systems under no-till

Abstract

In integrated soybean–beef cattle systems, the pasture grazing intensity affects the grain crop performance in succession. In addition, the dung cattle input influences the soil nutrients distribution in the field affecting the grain crop yield. This experiment aims to evaluate the effects of winter pasture heights and cattle dung input in soybean crop performance in succession. Main soil macronutrient content, soybean plant population, dry shoot biomass, plant height, plant nutrient content, soybean yield and yield components were assessed in the 10th experimental year. The experiment was conducted in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Southern Brazil, in a long-term integrated crop–livestock systems implemented in 2001. Treatments were arranged in a split plot design with four pasture heights (0.10, 0.20, 0.30, and 0.40m) and two levels of dung input (with or without). For all the variables analyzed, there was no interaction between pasture heights and cattle dung input (P>0.05). The pasture height management had only effect in soil P content, soybean dry biomass production, plant height and number of grains per pod. The increase in grazing intensity was associated to the rise in soybean plant height and dry mass production but was without effect on grain yield. The presence of grazing animals in the integrated soybean–beef cattle systems, and the resultant augmentation of dung input increased by 122% and 38% the availability of soil K and P, respectively in relation to the absence. Thus, the content of such nutrients in the plant were increased in 41% and 7%, respectively. The improvement in soybean nutrition increases the amount of pods per plant by 20%, and resulting in a 23% increase in soybean yield. These results indicate that cattle dung input resulting from grazing animals in the pasture phase increased soybean grain yield due to better plant nutrition. Although, the occurrence of cattle dung was very concentrated in some spots of the field and thus future studies should address strategies to improve spatial distribution of cattle dung input.