PHYSICAL QUALITY OF AN ANIONIC ACRUSTOX UNDER DIFFERENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Agricultural management systems can cause degradation of the soil physical quality, with consequences to the environment and crop yields. Thus, the purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare the physical quality of an anionic Acrustox in Guaira, Sao Paulo state, under the following treatments: no-tillage with irrigation, no-tillage without irrigation, crop-pasture rotation, conventional tillage, and native forest. The organic matter content, aggregate stability, soil bulk density, porosity and index S were evaluated. Results showed that human intervention reduced the soil quality and that no-tillage led to no increase in organic matter contents, but it did increase aggregation indices as compared with conventional tillage. In the no-tillage system plus irrigation, the aggregate stability increased in all evaluated soil layers and there also was gains in macropore volume in the 0-0.10 m soil layer over time. The use of crop-pasture rotation did not improve the soil physical quality and the index S varied according to the systems, although it was always higher than the value suggested as limit for good soil physical quality.