Abstract
Compost, rich in plant nutrients, is a readily available fertilizer with beneficial effects on physical, chemical, biochemical and biological properties of the soils. Moreover compost-based treatments can exert protective effects against plant diseases occurrence and/or stimulate an enhanced plant physiological status with improvements in quantity and quality of crop productions. In this study the effects of three different compost-based cropping managements on the productive response and main quality parameters of watermelon fruits were investigated. Treatments, in comparison with the conventional cultivation method, were: soil amendment with an agricultural waste compost (AWC), a municipal waste compost (MWC) and a foliar treatment with a compost tea blend (CTB). The productive responses and colour parameters related to compost treatments did not show significant differences compared to control ones, which reached a total yield of about 10.22 kg·m-2 with a mean weight of 2.74 kg. AWC caused a higher ascorbic acid content with an increase of 50% than conventional treatment, while fruits obtained by CTB showed higher values in firmness and Quality Index than control samples. The analysis of main sugars highlighted that the application of compost as biofertilizer influenced the ratio among fructose, glucose and sucrose with respect to those observed for control fruits.
Highlights
Among summer fruits, watermelons have a very high favour by consumers because to their high satiety index, low caloric intake and thirst-quenching and refreshing capability
Compost Tea Blend (CTB) prepared by mixing (50% vol.) two 1-week aerated teas produced by water extraction of artichoke and artichoke + fennel green composts (20% vol.)
Compost and compost teas are largely reported to be complementary to conventional methods of crop management for the enhancement of the quality associated to the agricultural products [19]
Summary
Watermelons have a very high favour by consumers because to their high satiety index, low caloric intake and thirst-quenching and refreshing capability. Many researches have been focused on plant biostimulants due to the increasing attention about the use of natural substances to potentiate crop. Both composts and compost teas can show this particular bioactivity on plants due to their content in aromatic, hormone-like organic molecules and useful microorganisms. This work, was focused on the effects of compost and compost tea on the main quality parameters of mini watermelons. To this aim, we hypothesized that the applied compost-based formulates may exert a suitable bioactivity on the plants related to the stimulation of quality parameters of the fruits
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