Multivariate Analysis in Corn Cultivars Productivity Submitted to Fertilizations and Row Spacing

The corn crop is important in various contexts of Brazilian agricultural production, both with respect to economic and social factors. The objective was to verify, through multivariate methods, the productive performance of two corn cultivars as a function of three types of fertilizations and two row spacing, identifying the correlation between the variables and the grouping between the evaluated treatments. The experiment was carried out at Experimental Farm Rafael Fernandes, Mossoró, Brazil. It was adopted a randomized block design at 3 × 2 × 2 factorial experiment with four replications, the treatments consisted of three fertilizations (OF: Organic Fertilization; OMF: Organomineral Fertilization and MF: Mineral Fertilization), two cultivars of corn (Bras 3010 and Potiguar) and two row spacing (80 cm and 50 cm). The highest productivity was found with the use of organic fertilization, in the cultivar Potiguar, in the row spacing of 80 cm. The final population, productivity and the mass of 1000 grains were the components that had the most effect in the evaluation of the data set. Each evaluated cultivar responded differently to the fertilizations and spacing evaluated. The agreement between the results of the cluster analysis and the main component analysis with the analysis of variance shows the adequacy of the multivariate statistical techniques used in this research.