Crop succession and its reflections on soybean performance

The fluctuations in yield and consequently in production occurred due to climatic adversities in the main producing states of Brazil. Farming has changed over time, and past scenarios have shown high exploitation of natural resources focusing on soil tillage and conventional seeding methods. This study aimed to determine the yield performance of soybean grown under 10 consolidated crop succession systems. The experiment was conducted during the 2018/2019 crop season, before the research project entitled “Sustainable production systems with better use of biological and natural resources, with treatments arranged in a randomized block design and four replications”. The treatments consisted of the following predecessor crops: Avena sativa, Avena strigosa, Triticum aestivum, Secale cereale, Brassica napus, Raphanus sativus, Avena strigosa + Raphanus sativus + Vicia sativa, Fallow, Avena strigosa + Lolium multiflorum, and Triticum aestivum – Fodder. Soybean was subsequently sown across winter crops. The succession that showed superior yield was Avena strigosa + Lolium multiflorum. This attribute was established by associating taller plants with the maximization of the number of grains per pod, hundred-grain mass, grain mass, and plant dry mass; in contrast, there was a lower emphasis on plant residue. The determining attributes for soybean yield were plant stand, plant height, the number of pods per plant, and total grain mass, with contrasts among groups composed of the succession of Avena sativa, Avena strigosa, Triticum aestivum, Secale cereale, and Brassica napus, distanced from Raphanus sativus, Avena strigosa + Raphanus sativus + Vicia sativa, Fallow, Avena strigosa + Lolium multiflorum, and Triticum aestivum - Fodder.