Weed Communities in Semiarid Rainfed Croplands of Central Argentina: Comparison between Corn (Zea mays) and Soybean (Glycine max) Crops

Abstract The semiarid Espinal in central Argentina, being recently transformed from natural semiarid grasslands into agriculture, represents an interesting scenario to understand the early stages of weed community assembly and its relationship with crop identity and management. Our aim was to characterize the weed communities in corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.], the main crops of the Espinal region, under the dominant rainfed conditions. Weed surveys were carried out in 53 fields, and farmers were interviewed to collect information about crop management. Floristic composition was compared within and between crops by calculating the additive partition of the abundance-based Bray-Curtis dissimilarity. We compared the frequency and mean cover of functional groups between crops through generalized linear models. Finally, canonical correspondence analysis was carried out to analyze the associations between floristic composition and agronomic variables. Mean alpha and gamma diversity was ...