ecosystem services, spontaneous plants, agrobiodiversity
Family farming, in addition to sustaining the food of humanity, contributes to the preservation of biological diversity when it adopts ecological management for the cultivation of food. Nevertheless, family farmers collaborate with the conservation of biodiversity by not using synthetic and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), in accordance with the Organic Agriculture Law. Therefore, the non-use of conventional inputs promotes different opportunities in the management of organic cultivation, as occurred with a family farmer, who paid attention to the functionality of a spontaneous soil cover in his organic cultivation system, when observing the action of a species in the control of plants that compete with its cultivation system. And that was how the agronomic studies of Diodia saponariifolia began. Nevertheless, the role of land cover is essential for the protection and promotion of biodiversity, as the soil is the main basis for the occurrence of biodiversity. However, in cropping systems, the function of cover crops is still incipient when we approach their interaction with the soil biota. Under such relevance, the objective of this work is to contribute to the evaluation of the functional diversities that Diodia saponariifolia may offer to the cropping system when associated with mycorrhizal fungi, assuming the following hypotheses: (I) Diodia saponariifolia as a spontaneous cover plant contributes to soil fertility through nutrient cycling and symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. (II) D. saponariifolia as cover plant in organic maize cultivation does not present competition in this cultivation system. For this, an organic cropping system located in Cachoeiras de Macacu in Rio de Janeiro was chosen, where an exploratory study was conducted under two in situ trials, the cultivation of corn under the presence of the live cover D. saponariifolia (T1) and the corn cultivation under the absence of Diodia saponariifolia (T2) cover. To analyze these hypotheses, the following analyzes were performed: chemical analysis of soil and pH (0-5cm and 5-10cm) in order to analyze the participation of D. saponariifolia in soil fertility management; the analysis of macronutrients from the maize plant tissue in order to analyze the availability of nutrients under the participation of live cover and the symbiosis interaction between D. saponariifolia and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, in order to prove the symbiosis and its benefits in the system of cultivation. In this study, the mutualistic interaction of Diodia saponariifolia with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi was revealed. D. saponariifolia contributed to the availability of carbon, nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, as well as to increase the acidity potential (H+Al) and soil pH. The macronutrients in plant tissue were higher in the treatment without spontaneous live coverage, although they had similarities in terms of potassium content. The treatment with the cover plant showed a significant increase in the number of spores. The species glomus lamellosum and glomus multistem had a positive correlation with the availability of potassium for the treatment with D. saponariifolia. With this, we can consider that D. saponariifolia contributed to the availability of nutrients through symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, soon cooperating with the organic management of fertility and collaborated with the management of maize cultivation, not presenting competition to the crop.