Soil Friends Club of Rio Verde, IPI and the National Soils Research Center of EMBRAPA award on 'Sustainability in No-Till Systems'

An award for "Sustainability in No-Till Systems" was recently presented to Ms. Graciely Vilela Gomes, MSc during the 9^th Meeting of the Brazilian No-Till Association. The meeting was held on the 10-12^th August 2009 at Rio Verde in Goias state, Brazil. The award, established by the Soil Friends Club of Rio Verde, IPI, and the National Soils Research Center of EMBRAPA (Brazilian Corporation for Agricultural Research), invites papers focusing on innovations in no-till practices based on academic research and on-farm experiments. No-till veterans and advanced farmers from the region evaluated almost 30 papers (28 manuscripts) presented by candidates from Rio Verde and other municipalities in Goias and Sao Paulo states. The paper submitted by Graciely Vilela Gomes, who recently graduated from the Federal University of Rio Verde (FESURV) on the "Importance of Brachiaria for soil fertility in no-till system", was selected as the best paper.

The research conducted by Ms. Gomes during the 2008/2009 agricultural season, was supported by the AGRISUS Foundation, and the soil and plant analyses were conducted as part of the joint IPI-EMBRAPA project "Fertilize Brazil". The results of this research show that in fields under an integrated cropping-pasture system, where Brachiaria was planted as a cover crop before soybean and maize, concentration of potassium and organic matter are higher in the upper layers of soil horizon, which enables higher yields of grains.