Abstract
ABSTRACT: Nowadays, an important economic movement is involved in the improvement of polyethylene trays for the production of seedlings, being developed with different volumes, numbers and cell formats in an each culture-specific manner. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the performance of curly lettuce originated from seedlings from trays with different volumes, through the comparison between conventional and hydroponic-NFT cultivation. Five volumes of trays (10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 cm³ of cell-1) were tested in conventional and hydroponic cultivation, from February to March 2016. For the purpose of comparison, the plants were evaluated through the characteristics of height, circumference, stem diameter, number of leaves, fresh shoot mass and productivity. The use of volumes greater than 10 cm³ showed higher precocity in both cultivation systems, with hydroponic cultivation being more precocious and productive when compared to conventional cultivation.
Highlights
Lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) is the most important leafy vegetable in terms of production area in conventional cultivation and represents 80% of the hydroponic-NFT cultivation in Brazil (FURLANI, 1999; SALA & COSTA, 2012)
This difference was more evident when we verified that the volume of 10 cm3 in hydroponic was superior to all the volumes in the field, except for the one of 50 cm3 that acquired average circumference of 100,31cm; the volume that gave greater circumference was the of 40 cm3 in hydroponics with 116.65 cm
Agreeing with the results of COCCO et al (2015) with strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa Duch.) and MACHADO et al (2018) with tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.), the use of seedlings with greater volume of tray is advantageous for the producer, because has greater space for the development of a denser root system, implying in a greater surface of absorption of water and nutrients, promoting better adaptability to the field, generating precocity in the cultivation (REGHIN et al.,2007; LEAL et al.,2011; COCCO et al.,2015)
Summary
Lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) is the most important leafy vegetable in terms of production area in conventional cultivation and represents 80% of the hydroponic-NFT cultivation in Brazil (FURLANI, 1999; SALA & COSTA, 2012). In Brazil in recent years, more and more vegetable producers have been interested in the adoption of higher technologies in their cultivation system, being a good example of this option, the cultivation in hydroponics-NFT This technology of soilless cultivation represents a more sustainable alternative to conventional cultivation, since it improves nutrition, water use and phytosanitary control of the plants, allowing the producer to obtain precocity in the cycle, greater productivity per area with higher quality and cleaning of product, besides reducing the manpower due better ergometry in handling (NETO & BARRETO, 2011; PAULUS et al, 2012). When transplanted, the seedlings are unable to compensate for evapotranspiration, even if well irrigated (WIEN, 1997; REGHIN et al, 2007)
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