MICROBIAL ACTIVITY AND SOIL FAUNA EVALUATION IN ORGANIC PRODUCTION SYSTEMS OF YELLOW PASSION FRUIT

Abstract

Soil organisms can be used as indicators of soil quality, allowing a diagnosis of the management systems used in agricultural systems. With the adoption of the agroecological production model, there is a need to determine which management systems in this system present the best performance for agricultural application. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of different passion fruit management systems on soil microbial activity through methods of evaluating microbial activity and observing the soil macrofauna community in an organic cultivation system. The experiment in an organic production system of yellow passion fruit was developed on a producer's property in the city of Mandaguari in the state of Paraná, with the following treatments: 1. Passion fruit with mowed spontaneous plants; 2. Passion fruit with interrows cultivated with green manures; 3. Passion fruit with management of spontaneous plants and fertilization with organic compost; 4. Passion fruit with colonial birds in the interrows; and 5. Forest, as a reference medium in equilibrium, for comparison between treatments in relation to soil biology. The design used was randomized blocks, with three replications. Biological characterization was performed in the treatments based on the quantification of CO2 released and carbon of microbial biomass (C-BMS) and evaluation of soil macrofauna and mesofauna, aiming to evaluate soil biology under the production systems and the determination of the most appropriate management. Planting passion fruit with mowed spontaneous plants obtained the best C-BMS and quantification of CO2 release indices, being the most recommended. The indices evaluated in the experiment proved to be sensitive to changes caused by the different uses of the soil in organic cultivation for the yellow passion fruit crop.