This study aimed to determine which attributes of a Cerrado Oxisol under organic production are more impacted by cropping systems consisted of combinations of common bean and corn crops, no-tillage (NT) and conventional tillage (CT) systems, and cover crops. Multivariate analysis techniques were applied on data of four experiments, two of them under NT and the other two in CT, one carried out with common bean crop and another with corn. The experiments were installed annually since November 2003 in Santo Antônio de Goiás, GO, in randomized block design, with four replications. Samples were taken from soil layer of 0-0.10 m in September 2003 for the initial chemical analysis (chemical reference). In November 2007 a new sampling of the plots and of a forest (physical and biological reference) was performed for determination of soil physical (PA), chemical (CA) and biological (BA) attributes. The cropping systems caused changes in PA and BA, as compared to the forest, and in CA, as compared to the initial chemical condition of soil. PA were more sensitive to detect changes in the quality of the soil under cultivation. The metabolic and microbial quotients were the most negatively affected by CT as compared to NT. CA were more sensitive in discriminating common bean crop from corn crop.
Phaseolus vulgaris L.; Zea mays; no-tillage; soil tillage; soil quality
