Senna macranthera (Fedegoso) has large natural occurrence, with potential use in the recovery of degraded areas. Due the lack of information on the nutrition of this forest species, this work evaluated the response of Senna macranthera to the doses of N, P, K, Ca, Mg and S on the growth and biomass production, and the indexes of quality of seedlings H/D, H/MSPA, MSPA/MSR and IQD. The experiment was carried out in a greenhouse and used samples of a dystrophic red-yellow latosol of the layer bellow 20 cm that were air dried, sieved and chemically characterized. The treatments were delimited according to a Baconian matrix,with three doses of the six macronutrientes and two additional treatments, one with reference doses and other without addition of nutrients. The experiments were arranged in a complete randomized design, with 4 repetitions, in a total of 80 sample units. Plants were collected and the orthogonal contrast analysis showed significant differences for all the treatmens applied to the studied variables. In spite of that, it was not possible to determine the critical nutrient dose for all analyzed variables. It was also verified the need for a greater differentiation among the tested doses, as well as of a control treatment for each studied nutrient. It is also recommended to increase the experimental time because of the slow growth rate of this species compared with others already studied.
Critical doses of macronutrients; Plant nutrition and Seedling production
