Discriminating Organic and Conventional Coffee Production Systems Through Soil and Foliar Analysis Using Multivariate Approach |
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Authors: | Romildo Rocha Azevedo Junior Janaina Biral Dos Santos Dilmar Baretta Alessandro Coutinho Ramos Rafael Otto Arnoldo Rocha Façanha |
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Institution: | 1. Laboratório de Microbiologia e Biotecnologia Ambiental, Unidade de Ecofisiologia das Intera??es Simbióticas, Universidade Vila Velha (UVV), Vila Velha, Brasil;2. Departamento de Zootecnia, Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina (UDESC/CEO), Chapecó, Brasil;3. Laboratório de Bioquímica e Fisiologia, Universidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense (UENF), Campos dos Goytacazes, Brasil;4. Departamento de Ciência do Solo, Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz (ESALQ), Piracicaba, Brasil;5. Laboratório de Biologia Celular e Tecidual, Universidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense (UENF), Campos dos Goytacazes, Brasil |
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Abstract: | This study tested the hypothesis that evaluating soil and leaf nutrient contents is useful to discriminate organic and conventional management systems of coffee plantations. The study consisted of areas planted with Coffea arabica under organic or conventional management located in Espírito Santo, Brazil. We detected significant differences between both management systems when we utilized multivariate statistics to discriminate the areas. In our experiments, the principal mineral leaf nutrients, which acted as indicators were phosphor (P), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), sodium (Na), zinc (Zn), and manganese (Mn), with higher contents in the organic coffee production system. The only mineral nutrient, which showed significantly lower values in leaves as well as in soil of organic coffee is boron (B). The implications of these findings are discussed. However, when using univariate statistics, like ANOVA or t-test, we did not find any significant difference between both management systems, although using the same dataset. Therefore, to discriminate between complex systems, we always recommend to recur to multivariate methodologies that are more adequate for such cases. |
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Keywords: | Coffea arabica canonical discriminant analysis foliar diagnosis mineral nutrition |
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