Spacing between Soybean Rows

Luiz Claudio Garcia,Marcos Kruppa Rogenski,Ivo Frare,Maghnom Henrique Melo,Marcos Martins,Thiago Inagaki,Ezequiel Barbosa De Oliveira,Leandro Nadolny,Newton Seifert Filho,Pedro Henrique Weirich Neto

doi:10.4236/ajps.2018.94056

Abstract

The soybean crop has great economical importance in Brazil and in the world. In order to make the crop production profitable, several factors must be considered. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of spacing between soybean crop rows (Glycine max). The experiment was installed in the Mutuca farm (Arapoti—PR, southern Brazil), in the crop seasons of 2012/2013 (four seeding seasons) and 2013/2014 (two seeding seasons), in a completely randomized blocks design. We used four treatments and six replicates. The treatments were the spacing between rows as follow: 0.25, 0.50, 0.75 and 1.00 m. The variables evaluated were: initial and final plant population, plant height, number of internodes, viable internodes, pods per plant, grains per pod, mass of thousand grains and crop productivity. We concluded that the reduction of the spacing between rows significantly increased, in most part of the crop seasons, the number of pods per plants and the crop productivity.

Highlights

The soybean agribusiness (Glycine max) has become one of the main productive chains of the Brazilian agricultural structure
The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of spacing between soybean crop rows (Glycine max)
The experiment was installed in the Mutuca farm (Arapoti—PR, southern Brazil), in the crop seasons of 2012/2013 and 2013/2014, in a completely randomized blocks design

Summary

Introduction

The soybean agribusiness (Glycine max) has become one of the main productive chains of the Brazilian agricultural structure. In the 2013/2014 crop season, the crop production reached more than 87 million tons, on more than 30 million of hectares; with average crop yield of 2900 kg·ha−1. The grain, oil and bran segments earned US $31 billion, which means 12.8% of all Brazilian external selling and 31% of Brazilian agribusiness exports [1]. Soybean yield is the result of management techniques in the selection of cultivar, seeding season, population, fertilization and pest control. The spacing between sowing lines can influence intercepted luminosity, weed occurrence, diseases, pesticide application technology, pest incidence and plant architecture [2].

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Methods

Results