Revealing soil legacy phosphorus to promote sustainable agriculture in Brazil

Exploiting native soil phosphorus (P) and the large reservoirs of residual P accumulated over decades of cultivation, namely "legacy P", has great potential to overcome the high demand of P fertilisers in Brazilian cropping systems. Long-term field experiments have shown that a large proportion (> 70%) of the surplus P added via fertilisers remains in the soil, mainly in forms not readily available to crops. An important issue is if the amount of legacy P mobilized from soil is sufficient for the crop nutritional demand and over how long this stored soil P can be effectively 'mined' by crops in a profitable way. Here we mapped the spatial-temporal distribution of legacy P over the past 50 years, and discussed possible agricultural practices that could increase soil legacy P usage by plants in Brazil. Mineral fertiliser and manure applications have resulted in ~ 33.4 Tg of legacy P accumulated in the agricultural soils from 1967 to 2016, with a current annual surplus rate of 1.6 Tg. Following this same rate, soil legacy P may reach up to 106.5 Tg by 2050. Agricultural management practices to enhance soil legacy P usage by crops includes increasing soil pH by liming, crop rotation, double-cropping, inter-season cover crops, no-tillage system and use of modern fertilisers, in addition to more efficient crop varieties and inoculation with P solubilising microorganisms. The adoption of these practices could increase the use efficiency of P, substantially reducing the new input of fertilisers and thus save up to 31.8 Tg of P fertiliser use (US$ 20.8 billion) in the coming decades. Therefore, exploring soil legacy P is imperative to reduce the demand for mineral fertilisers while promoting long-term P sustainability in Brazil

Dissimilaridade genética de girassol por meio de caracteres quantitativos Agronomic performance and genetic dissimilarity sunflower

Objetivou-se com este estudo avaliar, por meio de caracteres quantitativos, a dissimilaridade genética entre cultivares de girassol em diferentes localidades, além da concordância entre os métodos, visando à extração de linhagens para possíveis cruzamentos. Foram cultivados oito híbridos de girassol em duas localidades no noroeste do Rio Grande do Sul, com solo predominantemente do tipo Latossolo Vermelho distrófico. Foram utilizados métodos multivariados para determinar a divergência genética, utilizando a distância generalizada de Mahalanobis. Apesar dos rendimentos distintos entre locais e cultivares, os métodos de agrupamento tiveram concordância entre si. Para obtenção de populações segregantes, a cultivar 'Olisun 5', independente da localidade, demonstrou-se com maior potencial de hibridação, tendo as maiores contribuições por meio do número de aquênios por capítulo e altura de inserção do capítulo.<br>The aim of this study to evaluate by means of quantitative traits, the genetic dissimilarity among sunflower cultivars in different locations, in addition to the agreement between the methods in order to extract lines for future crosses. There were eight sunflower hybrids grown in two locations in northwestern Rio Grande do Sul, mainly with soil type Oxisol. Multivariate methods were used to determine the genetic diversity, using the Mahalanobis distance. Although the different yield between locations and cultivars, methods of grouping agreed among them selves. To obtain segregating populations, regardless of location, the cultivate 'Olisun 5', demonstrated greater potential for hybridization, with major contributions through number of achenes per chapter and height of the insertion section