PF Ortiz, SL Alarcon-Muriel, JF Mateus-Rodríguez and DA Ramos-Cabrera
Centro de Investigación de la Caña de Azúcar de Colombia – CENICAÑA, Cali, Colombia; pfsanguino@cenicana.org
In Colombia, after sugarcane harvests, chisel-type subsoiling implements are used to mitigate soil compaction. Usually, harvest residues are cleared from two interrows that will be decompacted and moved to the adjacent third interrowrrow (2×1 arrangement). However, performing chisel subsoiling operations while preserving residues in all interrows is likely to improve the relationship between the machine-soil-plant system and stimulates sugarcane production. Given this hypothesis, we evaluated the effect of chisel subsoiling on the compaction of a Mollisol with silty clay loam texture with ratoon sugarcane and residue retention. Four treatments were evaluated in a sugarcane field that had undergone five harvests: interrows showed the formation of hardened layers exceeding 2.0 MPa in the subsurface and middle soil profiles (10-40 cm, 40-60 cm) and lower porosities (<40 cm³/cm³). The removal of residues only from the sugarcane row and use of open chisel subsoiling implements at the edge of the interrow, reduced penetration resistance to <2.0 MPa, while porosity in the furrow increased to 0.52 cm³/cm³. Six months after sugarcane cutting and subsequent chisel subsoiling treatments, sugarcane growth was ~36 cm more than the control. Using chisel subsoiling implements in the presence of residues mitigated the compaction processes generated during harvests and stimulated sugarcane growth.