Soil Load-Bearing Capacity and Development of Root System in Area Under Sugarcane with Traffic Control in Brazil

Abstract

Attempts to achieve reduced traffic area and favorable conditions for sugarcane field durability have been made increasingly necessary to use traffic control techniques in areas of sugarcane production. Our goal was to assess the benefits of traffic control for sugarcane cultivation areas by using a load-bearing capacity modeling and developing a root system. Our experiment was conducted in a sugarcane cultivation area in the region of Nova Europa, São Paulo, Brazil, by assessing the following treatments: T1 = sugarcane planted with row spacing of 1.50 m managed without autopilot; T2 = sugarcane planted with row spacing of 1.50 m managed with autopilot; T3 = sugarcane planted with row spacing of 1.5 9 0.90 m managed with autopilot. Soil sampling occurred at layers of 0.00-0.15 and 0.15-0.30 m in inter-row center and seedbed region. Our results reveal that the use of autopilot in the seedbed area is less influenced by machinery traffic, which guarantees preserved soil structure maintenance in the plant row region. Mathematical models of the inter-row center presented higher load-bearing capacity values than the seedbed region for all treatments, layers, and cycles assessed. Additionally, load-bearing capacity increases as the sugarcane cultivation cycles evolve, including higher soil load-bearing capacity at the first ratoon cane cycle in relation to the cane-plant cycle. Finally, the sugarcane crop root system has good distribution during the cane-plant cycle; however, the first ratoon cane cycle has a downward trend for the plant rows in the inter-row center because of intensive machine traffic.

ROOT parameters of sugarcane and soil compaction indicators under deep strip tillage and conventional tillage

“…Planting and cultivation are performed with evenly spaced single rows of plants, and harvesting is carried out mechanically, with the harvester moving along one row of plants accompanied to one side by a cane collection truck. This leads to heavy vehicular traffic over the field, and the appearance of compacted layers due to the resistance to penetration that negatively affects the root growth of the crop 4 , showed, mainly by the increase of the bulk density and the soil penetration resistance down to the layer of 0.3 m, considered soil compaction indices 5 , 6 .…”

“…The distribution of the root system of a sugarcane plant depends on the soil structure, which in turn is related to soil physical attributes 4 , 14 . However, the effect of soil compaction on the growth and distribution of sugarcane root systems is still poorly understood, and it involves complex mechanisms that are sensitive to many factors 8 , 15 .…”

“…3 Department of Soils, Bento Gonçalves, Federal University of Rio Grande Do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Rio Grande Do Sul 91501-970, Brazil. 4 Sugarcane Center, Agronomic Institute of Campinas (IAC), Rod Antonio Duarte Nogueira, km 321, Ribeirão Preto, SP 14001-970, Brazil. * email: wellingthon.junnyor@uems.br…”

Load-bearing capacity and critical water content of the coffee plantation soil with management in full sun and shaded

“…Load-bearing capacity is important in studies of soil compaction, sustainability of productive systems, evaluation of different agricultural management systems and traffic of machines and animals. In this regard, Tassinari et al (2015), Watanabe et al (2017) and Sousa et al (2019) are some examples of the soil LBC theory applied in agriculture. The capacity of a soil to support load depends on several factors, such as the drying and wetting processes of the soil, texture and mineralogy, soil bulk density, use and management adopted in the agricultural area, structure and soil water content, being these last two parameters of great contribution (Dias Junior et al, 2019).…”

“…When the normal stress is higher than the pre-consolidation pressure value, the deformation of the soil is considered irreversible (or plastic) and the original shape of the soil can not be resumed, harming the agricultural production system (Dias Junior et al, 2019). Furthermore, based on the vertical stress values of agricultural machines, people or animals applied on soil, associated with the load-bearing capacity models, it is possible to determine critical soil water content to the traffic of machines and animals through the agricultural area (Araujo-Junior et al, 2011;Sousa et al, 2019). This study aims to evaluate the influence of the traditional (full sun) and agroforestry (shaded) management regimes in coffee plantations on the soil load-bearing capacity and to estimate critical soil water content for machinery traffic to contribute to the management plan for the agricultural area studied.…”