MANEJO DE POPULAÇÃO DE SOJA BUSCANDO MAIOR PRODUTIVIDADE DE GRÃOS

Abstract

Among management practices, plant density is an extremely important step for establishing a soybean crop. In many cases, just changing the plant population is enough to result in high grain yield gains for the crop. In this way, the objective of this research was to evaluate the productivity of soybeans in function of the use of different populations of plants. A randomized block design was used, with four treatments and four replications. The treatments consisted of the densities of 200, 250, 300 and 350 thousand seeds ha-1. Plant height, height of insertion of the first pod, number of pods per plant, number of grains per pod, mass of one thousand grains and grain yield were evaluated. The populations influenced the grain yield, and in the population of 250 thousand the highest yield was reached, 5905 kg ha-1. It was concluded that sowing density interferes with the number of pods per plant and soybean grain yield. The density of 250,000 seeds ha-1 provided the highest soybean grain yield and lowest sowing cost.