Total porosity and bulk density are strongly affected by soil management, which reflects directly in agricultural productivity. The productivity of the forage, Brachiaria brizantha, in function of bulk density and total porosity was analyzed in two soil management systems, in an experiment lead in the second semester of 2009, in Santa Teresa County, state of Espírito Santo, Brazil. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the variability, and linear and spatial correlations among the attributes (plant and soil) in order to identify an indicator of soil physical quality for corn forage productivity. A geostatistical grid was installed to collect soil and plant data, with 99 sample points, in each soil management system. The studied attributes did not vary randomly and the variability was medium to low, with well defined patterns. The spatial range varied between 20.3 and 24.2 m. On the other hand, the linear correlations between the forage productivity with the soil attributes were low due to the high data number. The comments of better correlation for productivity, was the bulk density in the depth of 0.0 - 0.15 independently of the soil management system, indicating that the productivity and the density of the soil are inversely proportional. Thus, the bulk density in the 0.0 - 0.15 m soil layer proved to be a satisfactory index of the soil physical quality regarding to forage yield.
soil physical attributes; geostatistics; soil management; crop forage
