SOWING DENSITIES AND NPK AND LIMING LEVELS ON COMMON BEAN YIELD, IN CONVENTIONAL CROPPING SYSTEM, IN PONTA GROSSA, PARANÁ STATE, BRAZIL

Abstract

The objective of this study was to identify the most appropriate plant populations and fertilizer-liming levels for the conventional crop system, with the Iapar 81 cultivar, a type II common bean, on a heavy clay soil in Ponta Grossa, Paraná State, Brazil. An experiment was carried out in the 2003/2004 summer rainy growing season. The experimental design was a randomized block with four replications, and treatments in a 4 x 4 factorial scheme, with four populations (100 thousand, 200 thousand, 300 thousand, and 400 thousand plants ha-1) and four NPK-liming levels (0.0, 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 times the recommended doses of NPK and lime). Plant height and grain yield, with their primary components (pod number per plant, grain number per pod and one hundred grains weight), were evaluated. Results allowed concluding that the increase of NPK-lime levels improved the plant height by 48%, the pod number per plant by 66%, and the grain yield by 88%, while the increase of plant population resulted in a decrease of 18% for plant height and 65% for pod number per plant, with no effect on the grain yield.

KEY-WORDS: Phaseolus vulgaris; plant population; fertilization; soil liming.