**Soil Management for the Establishment of the Forage Legume Arachis pintoi as a Mean to Improve Soil Fertility of Native Pastures of Mexico**

Braulio Valles-de la Mora, Epigmenio Castillo-Gallegos, Jesús Jarillo-Rodríguez and Eliazar Ocaña-Zavaleta

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/53318

**1. Introduction**

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44 Soil Fertility

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Pasture (rangelands) degradation in the humid tropics of Latin America is a fact that dates back several decades, and to date not only has not been resolved, but tends to worsen ac‐ cording to the unfavorable economic situation of livestock in the region [1].

In Mexico, according to a report [2], 75% of the degradation is caused by deforestation (25.8%), overgrazing (24.6%) and changing land use (agricultural and urban-industrial, 25.5%). The report adds that, in the north as well as in the southern of Mexico, livestock have overgrazed pastures and supports excesives stocking rates, causing a radical change in the floristic composition of rangelands and reduced permeability of the soil, increasing run‐ off and causes accelerated erosion thereof.

In this paper we addressed several land management practices for the establishment of the forage legume *Arachis pintoi* (CIAT accesions 17434, 18744 and 18748) as a means to improve soil fertility on native pastures of Mexico. *Arachis pintoi* was selected because it is a forage species that has enormous potential to improve the vegetation cover of the grazing areas in the Mexican tropics, and its contribution of nutrients to the soil, improving the fertility of this. All experiments were conducted in the northern of Veracruz state, Mexico, in a hot and humid climate, where soils are classified mainly as Ultisols or Oxisols. Some of the experien‐ ces were developed in native pastures and or in citrus plantations because this is a very im‐ portant crop in this region.

© 2012 Valles-de la Mora et al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2012 Valles-de la Mora et al.; licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

In the most recent experience, three land preparation management experiments were con‐ ducted, in order to evaluate the establishment of *Arachis pintoi* CIAT 17434. The results offer a range of practices to cattle producers from which they could select the best practice ac‐ cording their specific conditions.

**2.2. First experiment**

This was done in a lemon orchard Persian 3-year-old plantation trees with 7 x 7 m. We eval‐ uated the establishment as cover crop of the ecotypes: CIAT 17434, 18744 and 18748. The field was prepared with cross harrowing, 20 cm deep. AP 17434 was used for vegetative ma‐ terial (stolons 20 cm in length) while the remaining were planted with seeds (two seeds per planting point). All ecotypes were inoculated with *Bradyrhizobium* strain CIAT 3101. Sowing was done in furrows separated by one meter and 50 cm between plants. For the availability of plant material or seed ecotypes had different number of test sites, with three repetitions of a square meter per site, so the 17434 had five sites, while the 18744, two, and the 18748, a site. The treatments were fertilized at planting date with superphosphate single at 50 kg/ha of P2O5, and 30, 90 and 180 days after planting date with KCl (83 kg/ha). Number of plants (plants/m2) and plant height (cm) was evaluated at 4, 8 and 12 weeks; and coverage (%) at 4, 8, 12, 16, 20 and 24 weeks. The data of number of plants were subjected to a logarithmic transformation to meet assumptions of analysis of variance. Analysis of variance were per‐ formed, and means were compared using the Tukey test. For plant height only averages were estimated. We used a completely randomized design, with *Ap* ecotypes as treatments,

Soil Management for the Establishment of the Forage Legume Arachis pintoi as a Mean to Improve Soil Fertility...

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/53318

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and a level of probability (P) for comparison of means of 0.05 was used.

**Figure 1.** Climatic conditions during the establishment period.

Previously, in 2006, two experiments were carried out in order to assess the establishment of *Arachis pintoi* as a cover crop in citrus plantations.

Also, were evaluated two treaments to establish *Arachis pintoi* and *Pueraria phaseoloides*. The two treatments consisted of (1) weeding by slashing (S) and application of herbicides (H), and (2) burning (+B) or not (-B), as main plots. Phosphorus (simple superphosphate) appli‐ cation (-P, +P) was included as subplots.

In other experiment, two methods of soil preparation were evaluated in a native pasture. The two methods, conventional tillage and minimum tillage were evaluated under the es‐ tablishment of *A*. *pintoi* CIAT 17434 with fertilization (T1 and T2) and without fertilization (T3 and T4). In terms of number of *A*. *pintoi* plants established and soil cover, with complete soil preaparation, gave the best results. The legume did not respond to fertilization because of its slow initial growth.
