Agregação e proteção física da matéria orgânica em Latossolo Vermelho sob plantas de cobertura de inverno e sistemas de preparo do solo em experimento de longa duração

Summary

The soil management systems cause changes to the aggregation and the stock of soil organic matter (SOM). The aim was to evaluate the influence of the winter cover crops and the tillage systems in aggregation and carbon (C) stock in soil and SOM fractions. The experiment started in 1986 at the Agronomic Institute of Paraná, in Pato Branco, in an Oxisol. The treatments are a combination of winter cover crops: black oat, rye, hairy vetch, common vetch, oilseed radish, blue lupine, wheat and fallow, and tillage systems: no tillage (NT) and conventional tillage (CT), in split plot design with three replications. Soil samples were collected in November 2012, in layers 0-5, 5-10 and 10-20 cm. In study 1, the aggregate stability were performed through wet sieving for determination of the mean weight diameter (MWD) and the aggregate distribution in diameter classes, and also the organic carbon (OC) in the aggregate. In study 2 only samples of plots black oat, oilseed radish and fallow, under NT and CT, were used in performing the density fractionation of SOM to obtain the free particulate organic matter (free-POM) and occluded particulate organic matter (occluded-POM) was performed. The concentration of C in soil and in free- POM and occluded-POM were analyzed by dry combustion, but the C concentration in mineral-associated organic matter (min-OM) was obtained by calculating the difference. The stock of C in soil and fractions of SOM and carbon management index (CMI) were calculated. In study 1, for all layers, the soil under NT had higher amounts of large aggregates that CT, which resulted in higher MWD of aggregates. The winter cover crops had no significant influence on the MWD of aggregates. The NT showed higher OC content of aggregates for the three diameter classes in the 0-5 cm layer compared to the CT. The highest levels of OC were found in the diameter classes >2 and <0.25 mm in the three soil layers. In study 2, for the 0-5 cm layer, the NT had higher C stocks in soil, free-POM and occluded-POM compared to CT. And for winter cover crops, the soil with radish had the highest C stock for the free-POM in the surface layer. The min-OM promoted greater accumulation of C for all management systems and soil layers. The NT promotes an increase in the aggregation and soil C stock, and it enables greater action of protection mechanisms of SOM, indicating the higher quality of this system compared to CT.