Plant spatial arrangement affects grain production from branches and stem of soybean cultivars

Abstract

Phenotypic plasticity is the ability of plants to undergo changes in morphology and yield components to adapt themselves to distinct environmental conditions. The knowledge on the changes in yield components of branches and stems at varied plant spatial arrangements needs to be updated due to recent changes in soybean production system. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate the yield components of branches and stems, as well as to assess the share of these plant parts in the total grain yield of soybean cultivars with indeterminate growth type, under different spatial arrangements. The experiment was conducted during the growing seasons of 2013/2014 and 2014/2015, under a randomized complete-block design and in a 4 × 3 × 2 factorial scheme with three replications. Treatments consisted

Effect of row spacing, seeding rate and nitrogen fertilization on yield and yield components of soybean

“…The single plant biomass was the highest in 2017, the SPlY in both years and single pod grain yield in 2017. Similar to Ferreira et al (2018), who reported a higher production of pods and grains in branches with narrower row spacing, we also observed more pods plant -1 and more grains plant -1 with wider row spacings. Contrary to our observations, Cox and Cherney (2011) reported for three row spacings (19, 38 and 76 cm) no differences in the plant density but a lower AGDM and grain yield with wider row spacing due to a lower pod density, a lower grain density and a lower number of grains plant -1 , whereas grains pod -1 increased as also observed in our study with wider row spacing.…”

“…Contrary to that, Envi (1973) observed a decrease of the TKW of side branches with increasing seeding rate. Ferreira et al (2018) reported that with increasing seeding rate, the number of pods plant -1 was reduced in a greater magnitude at the branches than at the main stem whereas grain pod -1 was neither altered in the pods located at the stem or at the branches when the plant arrangement changed. Similar to these observations for soybean, also in faba bean, different plant densities tended not to affect the pod density (Patrick and Stoddard, 2010), as competition between plants generally reduced pods plant -1 rather than grains pod -1 or seed size (Adisarwanto and Knight, 1997).…”

“…Our correlation results and similarities or differences to other experiments highlight the high phenotypic plasticity of soybean to undergo changes in morphology during adaption to distinct environmental conditions (cf. Ferreira et al, 2018).…”

Grain, oil, and protein production on soybean stems and branches under reduced densities

“…The low proportion of branches in grain production for plants grown at higher sowing densities is probably due to the rapid closing of the canopy during vegetative growth, leading to an unfavorable environment to branching. Thus, production becomes more dependent on the stems (Ferreira et al, 2018).…”

“…Soybean plants at low densities tend to emit a high number of branches and increase their size, providing an increase in the number of pods per plant, which generates higher production per plant, thus maintaining the crop grain yield, even with a reduction in the number of plants per area (Ferreira et al, 2018). High plant densities and small interrow spacings decrease the contribution of branches to grain yield, increasing the proportion of stems in the production.…”