Contribution of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi to enhancing soil health in diversified cropping system

• Grant number: 24/18394-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Program to Stimulate Scientific Vocations
• Start date: March 17, 2025
• End date: May 06, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Agronomy - Soil Science
• Principal Investigator: Maurício Roberto Cherubin
• Grantee: Maria Beatriz da Silva Costa
• Host Institution: Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz (ESALQ). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Piracicaba , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Healthy soils are crucial for meeting the demand for food production in a changing climate agriculture. Soil biological activity play several roles in improving nutrient cycling, suppression of diseases, soil structuring and others that are fundamental to sustaining soil health. Among the soil organisms, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are a key group. AMF are mutualistic symbionts that establish associations with more than 80% of vascularized plant species, including dominant crops in Brazilian agriculture such as soybeans, corn, sugarcane, as well as forage crops used as cover crops or pasture. Thus, this research project will focus in soil samples taken from field experiment with different cropping systems and different parameters related to AMF of the soil will be quantified, such as abundance of AMF spores and autoclave-citrate extracted proteins (ACE-protein). The study will be conducted in areas located in the Brazilian Cerrado biome, where intensive agricultural monocropping are prevalent and more complex cropping systems have gained traction to increase the diversity. The sampled areas will be under three cropping systems: i) Conventional monocrop, ii) traditional crop succession (maize-soybean) and, iii) cover cropping (soybean-ruzigrass), iv) crop rotation (soybean-sunn hemp, soybean-ruzigrass, soybean-pearl millet). The AMF spores found will be visualized using a stereoscopic microscope and then separated and quantified, and the ACE-protein will extract and evaluated. This project will allow to for a better understanding of how cropping systems can increase soil health through increasing AMF spores and soil protein content.