Zea mays, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, groundcover
Living ground cover plants are essential for the maintenance of planetary biodiversity. However, cover crops offer benefits in nature conservation; there is also a relevant role in improving soil fertility in cropping systems. This study is relevant to exploring the functional diversity that the “groundcover” spontaneous cover plants offer to the agroecosystem. The exploratory trial was carried out in an organic garden-forest system on an Oxisol in a productive pole of family farming in the São José da Boa Morte settlement, in the municipality of Cachoeiras de Macacu/RJ; in which the spontaneous emergence of a living ground cover plant, the species D. saponariifolia (DS), became a research instrument under the valuation of local knowledge and biodiversity. It was necessary to demarcate the treatments in situ, according to the occurrence of SD throughout the garden-forest system. In this way, two treatments were delimited: (I) - DS as a spontaneous live cover (CVE) under corn cultivation (CD) and (II) its absence under corn cultivation (SD). The general objective of this work was to contribute to the evaluation of the functional diversities that Diodia saponariifolia as CVE may offer to the cropping system. For this, the following were evaluated: soil fertility, the contribution of DS in the nutrition and productivity of corn, as well as the interaction with the community of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMFs). This study presents the first report of mycorrhizal symbiosis between SD and AMFs. In general, DS coverage supported nutrients for maize cultivation, both through nutrient cycling and a symbiotic pathway with the AMFs.