A large proportion of the land in the Atlantic forest region in the south east of Brazil is today degraded with little utilisation for agriculture, grazing or forestry. The recuperation and development of these areas using traditional production systems suffers from two principal handicaps: much of the land is steep hillsides which hampers mechanised cultivation and facilitates soil erosion, and the low availability of plant nutrients, principally nitrogen. The integration of pastures with trees has become considered as a viable option to promote sustainable land use for animal production systems in this region. The objective of this project was to monitor the principal inputs, losses and transformations of N in a pasture of Brachiaria decumbens cv. Basilisk in monoculture (BM) and in comparison with the same grass in association with trees (SSP). The experiment was localised at the Experimental Station of Coronel Pacheco (Minas Gerais), with five animals per paddock under rotational grazing (six paddocks of 0.5 ha). The following parameters were monitored over a period of 12 months: forage availability, live weight gain and forage consumption of the animals, existing litter and the litter deposited in periods of 14 days. Considering the total litter deposited the consumed forage and the change in standing biomass over the 12 month period it was possible to estimate the net aerial primary productivity (NAPP) of the pasture and the cycling of nitrogen in the two pasture systems. The standing biomass showed an annual mean of 1,800 and 1,653 kg/ha in the silvopastoral (SSP) and grass-alone (BM) systems respectively. The live weight gains of the animals in SSP were higher with a mean of 0.51 kg/heifer/day. In the BM pasture the weight gain was 0.45 kg/heifer/day. The SSP promoted a significant increase in the deposition of litter. Calculations of the quantity of litter deposited in 14-day periods in the SSP and BM showed values of 21,812 and 16,264 kg DM/ha/year, respectively. The NAPP of the SSP pasture was greater with values of 26,202 and 279 kg/ha/year for DM and N, respectively. In the BM pasture the estimates of NAPP were 20,133 and 148 kg/ha/year for DM and N, respectively. The quantity of N exported from the pasture in the live weight gain was 8 kg/ha for the SSP and 7 kg/ha for the BM, corresponding to 16 and 18% of total consumed N for the SSP and BM pastures, respectively. The losses of N from faeces and urine also did not differ between the pasture systems. Owing to the presence of N2 -fixing species of legume trees present in the SSP, and the beneficial effects of the presence of shade it is to be expected that animal production levels would be sustained for longer in this system than under braquiária in monoculture, hence constituting a viable alternative to recover areas suffering from the process of degradation.
