ROLE OF PORE STRUCTURE AND MICROBIAL ACTIVITY ON CARBON SEQUESTRATION IN INTEGRATED AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS

Abstract

Carbon (C) sequestration via integrated crop-livestock (ICL) systems is known, but the mechanisms involved in this process have not yet been fully elucidated in tropical environments. Associated with this, microbial activity is affected at the micro-scale by the abiotic conditions of aggregates that differentiate with land use change, and affect the turnover of C. Thus, the main of this project is to elucidate the influence of the pore network of soil macroaggregates on C dynamics, and to understand the cause-and-effect relationships induced by integrated systems on soil microbial community diversity, microbial biomass carbon, glomalin and enzyme activity. The experimental area was installed Sinop/MT at Embrapa Agrossilvipastoril farm, and conducted for ten years in a randomized block design, with three treatments: Crop succession (CS), Integrated crop-livestock (ICL) and Pasture (P). X-ray computed microtomography (µCT) analysis will be used to evaluate the pore architecture of the macroaggregates, metagenomic analyses to evaluate the microbiome associated with C storage, the fumigation-extraction method for microbial biomass carbon, sodium citrate solution for glomalin, and the determination of the enzymatic activity by p-nitrophenol calorimetry. The results will allow the design of sustainable strategies to manage C stocks in integrated agricultural systems in Brazil, as well as to understand the role of soil pores in the physical protection of C, and to understand the dynamics of C in tropical soils, corroborating with the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) by Brazil in the Paris agreement.