Soil moisture in forage cactus plantations with improvement practices for their resilience

The present study evaluated soil moisture (theta) in forage cactus plantations under resilience practices such as irrigation, mulching and intercropping with sorghum. The experiment was arranged in a randomized block design with five water availability conditions (0, 8.75, 17.5, 26.25 and 35% of the reference evapotranspiration), and three planting systems: forage cactus exclusive system (PE), forage cactus with mulch (PC) and intercropping between forage cactus and sorghum (PS). Water content was measured until a depth of 0.60 m. Meteorological data were recorded between June 2012 and June 2013. Water content was not affected by different resilience practices and the variation coefficient was low to medium (4.0 to 22.1%). The temporal variation of soil moisture was more affected by the changes in rainfall, while the physical properties (soil density, porosity and grain size) were decisive in the vertical variation. It was concluded that periods with rainfall events favor the alternation of practices to improve forage cactus resilience (irrigation, mulch and intercropping).