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Soil ecological engineering and management of soil biology. <BR>A contribution to achieving zero hunger? (Communication session)

EUROSOIL2020CONT-2119

ECOSYSTEM SERVICES PROVIDED BY SOIL ARTHROPODS IN INTENSIVE CROP PRODUCTION SYSTEMS: THE ROLE OF INTERCROPPING

Maria do Céu Godinho¹, Elsa Valério¹, Patricia Vidigal^{* 2}, Elisabete Figueiredo², Cristina Amaro Costa³, Rosa Santos Coelho^{1, 4}

¹Escola Superior Agrária de Santarém, Instituto Politécnico de Santarém, Santarém, ²Linking Landscape, Environment, Agriculture and Food (LEAF), School of Agriculture of the University of Lisbon, Lisbon, ³Escola Superior Agrária de Viseu, Instituto Politécnico de Viseu, Viseu, ⁴Center for Environmental and Sustainability Research, Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, School of Sciences and Technology, NOVA University of Lisbon, Caparica, Portugal

Content: The functional diversity of arthropods is central in agroecosystems since it ensures the provisioning of different ecosystem services such as pest control, nutrients recycling, and pollination. These ecosystem services depend deeply on cultural and phytosanitary practices. Changes in agricultural management, namely agricultural intensification, may affect ecosystem services by changing the established species (causing natural enemies decline) and by modifying their interactions.

Soil arthropods can also determine important services in agricultural systems. Their knowledge, in terms of richness, abundance, equitability and distribution, are important tools (indicators) for scientists, technicians and farmers to understand soil conditions and factors that affect them and to support their decision-making.

In the Portuguese Ribatejo region, open field annual crops are among the most economically important crops, managed intensively regarding irrigation, fertilization, pesticide use and soil mobilization. Minimizing the use of production factors maintaining the economic relevance of the open field annual crops in the region is a huge challenge. The use of ecosystem services of soil arthropods to reduce the application of pesticides and fertilizers will promote the sustainability of agricultural practices and systems. Cultural practices that can promote the increase and improvement of soil arthropods is a central issue.

Aiming at looking for the differences between the services that arthropod biodiversity can provide, a study was conducted in open field annual crops. The study was conducted at two experimental commercial fields with different main crops: (i) São João de Brito field has a system with potato and maize rotation and (ii) Herdade Quinta de Manique has a processing tomato monoculture system. The experimental plan was based on intercropping technique with four different treatments to evaluate its impact and soil biodiversity improvement. The four modalities aimed to test the impact of (i) a consociation with Avena sativa & Vicia sativa, (ii) biofumigation with a catchcrop Raphanus sp., (iii) Lollium sp. with inoculated seeds with a beneficial bacteria complex. and (iv) the control (conventional technique without intercropping).

Arthropods were monitored twice during the crop cycle using pitfall traps. A total of 16 traps at each commercial field were used considering four replications in each treatment. Arthropods were separated at laboratory considering morphotypes. The morphotypes were grouped by the main functional groups after identifying families, especially those who are predators in a perspective of assessing the increase of the natural limitation of pests whose cycle is completed in the soil. This functional diversity was assessed and discussed, as well as the reasons and practices responsible for the differences in biodiversity related with each treatment.

Disclosure of Interest: None Declared

Keywords: functional biodiversity, Intercropping, open field annual crops, pitfall traps