Banca de DEFESA: MARIA ALINE ALVES MOTA

MORPHOLOGICAL, PRODUCTIVE ASPECTS, BIODIVERSITY OF POLLINATORS AND FORAGING BEHAVIOR IN Clitoria ternatea L. IN DIFFERENT CULTIVATION SYSTEMS

Bees. Butterflies. Legume. Forage production.

The use of legumes in intercropping with grasses in animal production systems can bring several benefits, such as increasing the nutritional value of the diet and providing forage for pollinating insects. These aspects are important for greater sustainability and persistence of the system. Thus, the objective was to evaluate morphological and productive aspects, biodiversity of pollinating insects and the foraging behavior of butterfly pea (Clitoria ternatea L.) in different cropping systems (monoculture and intercropping with elephant grass genotypes) and year. The experimental design was complete randomized blocks, with four replications. The second year of evaluation, regardless of the cropping system, provided larger plants (41.4 cm), with more branches (7.4 branches plant^-1) and higher forage production (583.5 kg of DM ha^-1 60 days). The butterfly pea in monoculture had higher plant height (42.7 cm), crown diameter (50 cm), number of pods per plant (12.0 pods plant^-1), seeds per pod (6.8 seeds pod^-1), forage production (768.8 kg of DM ha^{- 1}), leaf production (330.8 kg of DM ha^-1) and pod production (207.8 kg of DM ha^-1), compared to butterfly pea intercropped with Mott. The flowers of the butterfly pea were visited mainly by species of bees and butterflies, highlighting Trigona spinipes, which was more dominant in the two years of evaluation, regardless of the cultivation system. It is concluded that the year of evaluation exerts greater influence on morphology and productivity than the cropping system. The occurrence of a wide variety of floral visitors in butterfly pea shows the importance of including this legume in the elephant grass monoculture to maintain the biodiversity of pollinators.