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 Parana State, Brazil, where there were five parallel areas with the following treatments: maize + Urochloa brizantha cv. Marandu (T1), maize + Urochloa brizantha cv. Piata (T2), maize + Urochloa brizantha cv. Xaraes (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.