Application of Plant Densities in Management Units in the Soybean Cultivation

The application of management units (MU’s) aims to make economically viable to precision agriculture, making the technique accessible to a greater number of producers. Using MU’s, the experimental area is divided into plots with different productive potentials. In this context, the objective of the experiment was to verify the effectiveness of the area division in MU’s and to define the soybean plant density that provides higher productive efficiency in each MU. For the formation of MU’s it was used the altitude variation and the soil penetration resistance 0-0.1 m in the experimental area, being that the area was divided into 2 MU’s, called MU1 and MU2, and each MU was composed of 8 plots. At planting, 2 plant densities were applied, 214 000 and 257 000 plants ha-1, and each density was applied in 4 plots per MU, using row spacing of 0.70 m. In relation to productivity, there was a significant difference, applying the t-Student test, between MU’s, and the MU2, unit with higher productive potential, located in the highest part in the area, achieved higher productivity; and there was an effect, using the Tukey test, on the application of the 2 different plant densities in the MU’s, being that the densities of 214 000 and 257 000 plants ha-1 reached, respectively, higher productivity in MU2 and MU1.