Relação entre resistência mecânica do solo à penetração e textura do solo em área de colheita mecanizada de cana-de-açúcar no litoral paraibano

Abstract

Every year, Brazil has established itself as the largest producer of cane sugar in the world and by the need for a source of clean and renewable energy, the cane sugar has occupied decisive role in world economic development. The northeastern region has approximately 16% of domestic production, significant difference when compared to the production in the southeast and south. The intensive use of arable land for food production and bioenergy has caused acceleration of soil degradation especially in soil physical properties. This problem has been aggravated due to the increasing use of agricultural machinery traffic and frequency of these machines, due to the short periods of planting, to the detriment of weather conditions, compliance with contract farming by farmers and advancement of new technologies. In this scenario the mechanical resistance to penetration comes with a parameter for assessing soil physical quality in detriment of the intensive use of agricultural machinery in particular mechanical harvesting of cane sugar combined with precision farming. The research was conducted in an area of 40 ha belonging to Japungu Usina located country Santa Rita - PB. For sand, silt and clay were collected 68 samples in depth 0.11 - 0.20 m to soil mechanical resistance to penetration sampled 151 points in depth 0.01 - 0.20 m. These results indicate that, in the study area, there is spatial dependence of the attributes studied and there is compacted layer depth 0.16 - 0.20 m