The variety generated by all semirings of order three is nonfinitely based

RESUMO

We prove that the variety generated by all semirings of order three is nonfinitely based, where addition is not required to be commutative and the signature has no constants. The same conclusion holds for the variety generated by all additively idempotent semirings of order three. We establish these conclusions by excluding a uniform bound on the number of variables in an identity basis. Our proof uses identities associated with anchored odd cycles. Three small commutative test semirings isolate a polynomial equivalence class consisting of exactly two polynomials. For a cycle of length $n$, every first nontrivial deduction between them requires an identity with at least $n+1$ variables, even under polynomial substitutions. A retraction followed by a band quotient transfers absorption identities to arbitrary addition and identifies the ai-subvariety of the full joint variety with the joint variety of the ai-generators. Validity of the cycle identities follows from a structural analysis of chain and flat addition. An elementary sixth-power lemma for semigroups of order at most three supplies the retraction.