Productivity of Sweet Maize (Zea mays L.) under Previous Crops and Cropping Systems in the Brazilian Northeast

Abstract

The productivity level in the agroecosystems of the coasts of the Coastal Tracks 37°12'00"W 11°01'00"S can be affected by the management system adopted in the soil, altering their physical, chemical and biological properties, compromising productivity of cultivated crops. This study evaluated the effect of no-tillage systems (no-tillage, minimum and conventional tillage) and previous ones: peanut (Arachis hypogaea), crotalaria (Crotalaria juncea), beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) and pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan). The spike yield of sweet corn (Zea mays L.) on an Ultissol, aimed to measure the productivity of the agroecosystem studied in the Coastal Tablelands Sergipano. The maize productivity evaluation parameters were: number of ears, number of productive plants, weight of green ears and relation between number of plants with ears and total number of plants; being  measured for each system of preparation of the soil and for each culture antecedent to the corn. The data were submitted to the analysis of variance and the means were compared by the test of Tukey at 5% of probability. The no - tillage system provided better levels of sweet corn yield (9.2 t.ha-1), as well as a higher number of plants per hectare (44,382 plants.ha-1), a higher number of spikes per hectare (39,679 spikes.ha-1), and a higher proportion of plants with spike and total plants (89%). Among previous crops, solar hemp provided higher yields of sweet corn in conventional and minimum cultivation systems (7.263 t.ha-1 and 9.004 t.ha-1, respectively), while bean cultivation was the preferable previous  crop in the no-tillage system (9.674 t.ha-1) after eight years of experimentation.