Avaliação da variabilidade do estado nutricional e produtividade de café por meio da análise de componentes principais e geoestatística

Abstract

Evaluation of plant nutritional status brings several contributions to the coffee crop, especially when considering the spatial variation in the production fields. This experiment aimed to analyze the spatial variability in the nutritional status and yield of arabic coffee, using the principal component analysis (PCA) and geostatistics. The experiment was conducted in a grid of 50 sampling points in a field of Coffea arabica L., cv. Catuaí. Leaf samples were taken for macro and micronutrient analyses, and fruit were collected for yield evaluation. Data were subjected to PCA for transformation of nutrient values into new variables and then submitted to geostatistics to quantify the degree of spatial dependence of the main components and yield. The combined use of PCA and geostatistics allowed the efficient study of the nutritional status of the plants. The crop showed nutritional imbalance, with excess N and Cu limiting yield even in areas with adequate leaf concentration of the other nutrients.