Aquarius Project receives award in Switzerland

Work on Soil Health by the Aquarius Project research group is awarded as a highlight at the 8th World Congress on Conservation Agriculture (WCCA) - Switzerland

On the 21st to 23rd of June 2021, the Professor and coordinator of the Aquarius Project Drº Telmo Amado (UFSM), the master's student Jardel Passinato (PPGCS-UFSM) and the Project collaborator Drº Alan Acosta (Drakkar Solos) with support from the University of Reading (UK) through Prof. Dr. Amir Kassam, participated in the main international Congress related to conservation agriculture, the 8th World Congress on Conservation Agriculture (WCCA), where their work was chosen as one of the best at the event. The theme of this Congress was “The Future of Agriculture: Profitable and Sustainable Agriculture with Conservationist Agriculture”, being held online in the city of Bern, Switzerland. The event brought together 784 participants from 108 countries and had the participation of producers, consultants, researchers and leaders from industry and government agencies. In total, 203 technical/scientific works were submitted, of which approximately 100 were selected for oral presentation. At the end of the event, 20 works were awarded, 12 in oral format and 8 in poster form.

The award-winning work was titled “Soil Health Checkup of Brazilian Conservation Agriculture Farming Systems”, being presented orally by Jardel Passinato and aimed to evaluate soil health and the management practices that must be adopted to achieve it. "The study analyzed different productive environments (high, medium and low productive potential, determined based on harvest maps, satellite images and farmers' experience) in plots located in the main agro-ecoregions of the country (South, Central-West and Northeast ), involving four Brazilian states and consisting of more than 60 sampling points", reports the master's student responsible for the research, Jardel Passinato (PPGCS-UFSM). In the first phase, the work through its partners (Drakkar Solos, Stara, Cotrijal and OWS together with UFSM) selected farmers, with whom it maintains collaborative relationships and who had consolidated data history. This work was supported by ABDI (Brazilian Industrial Development Agency) through the Agro 4.0 notice. The Aquarius Project has been dedicated to research into improving soil quality since 2009.

The growing demand for quality food produced under systems that generate minimal impact on the environment and are based on healthy soil, has pressured professionals in the agricultural sector to seek “cleaner or decarbonized” means of production, which are capable of to provide ecosystem services, such as atmospheric carbon sequestration, intensification of nutrient cycling and better use of water. There is an expectation that in the future ecosystem services may become profitable for farmers. In this case, monitoring the production system (mainly the soil) is of primary importance, in order to guide management practices that condition the maintenance of the soil's productive capacity. In this sense, the adoption and improvement of conservation agriculture systems, such as the direct planting system, are at the center of attention. Currently, Brazil is one of the countries with the greatest adoption of direct planting, with approximately 35 million hectares managed under this management system, but with a very large diversity in the quality of management of the system depending on climate, soil, crops cultivated, adoption time and management. 

Research institutions worldwide are constantly searching for indicators that enable early diagnoses of the improvement or degradation of the production system at the farm level. To this end, in addition to being assertive and sensitive to the variations that have been occurring, such parameters must present accessible costs to the producer and the possibility of their interpretation through the establishment of critical levels. In soil science, the chemical and physical attributes of the soil already have reference values ​​so that it can be inferred about the quality of management being adopted. However, biological attributes, due to their characteristics of high spatial and temporal variability and complexity, are still little used on a large scale.

In 2020, Embrapa launched BioAS - Soil Bioanalysis Technology, with the aim of making the assessment of biological soil attributes viable in the main producing regions of Brazil. Through a support network of laboratories capable of providing, in addition to the traditional chemical analysis of the soil, the analysis of biological activity. The method is based on the evaluation of enzymes that regulate key processes in the carbon, phosphorus and sulfur cycle (in the case of this work, the enzymes β-glucosidase and arylsulfatase). Such analyzes become part of a soil quality index that is still being developed for Brazilian macro-ecoregions.

The work highlighted at the 8th WCCA analyzed properties in Rio Grande do Sul, Mato Grosso, Bahia and Goiás, where, through existing databases, representative plots and their distinct productive environments were identified. In addition to recording the main management activities adopted in the last decade. Initially, comparing the producing macro-ecoregions, it was identified that as the average temperature and sand content increased, there was a decrease in the organic matter content and biological activity. The organic matter content, the calcium content in the soil and the decrease in acidity (aluminum saturation) were important factors related to biological activity in most of the sampled areas. The result was related to better crop development, as plants and biological activity are closely related. As the contribution and diversity of plant residues to the soil increases, erosion control and a gradual positive effect on biological activity and, consequently, on the organic matter content occur in the short term. 

The work also warns that approximately 40% of the samples collected had a low organic matter content and low biological activity, requiring a soil revitalization plan. At the field level, it was possible to relate enzyme activity to different production environments. In general, the most productive places in the plot are also those with the highest enzymatic activity, suggesting a high level of soil organization. The enzymes also showed promising results regarding the diversity of soil biota. In the work, the pioneer area of ​​the Aquarius Project (Lagoa area in Não Me Toque) was also selected and the enzymatic activity that makes up BioAS (a method that is being proposed to be adopted on a large scale in Brazil) was related to the Soil DNA (a more complex, expensive and difficult method to be adopted on a large scale, but much more informative about biological activity) obtaining very promising results, since the enzymes that make up BioAS were able to identify productive environments , especially distinguishing the low potential environment from the others, thus becoming a useful tool for site-specific management of the plot aimed at improving soil health, completes the work supervisor, professor Telmo Amado. 

The next step is to produce a scientific article to form the special edition of the congress (in an international journal) and disseminate the results nationally through the Aquarius Project website. With this, it is expected that biological activity will be another layer of information to be considered in the intelligent planning of plots in the context of precision/digital agriculture. Thanks to the farmers, partner companies and ABDI who made this work possible.