Response of Tomato Plants to Irrigation with Magnetized Water and some Foliar Application Treatments under Drip Irrigation System: 1- Vegetative Growth and Chemical Constituents of Leaves.

Abstract

This experiment was conducted in summer seasons of 2016 and 2017 on tomato plants 6112 hybrid to evaluate tomato plants performance (vegetative growth characteristics and chemical constituents of leaves) in response to irrigation water treatments (magnetized and non-magnetized), foliar applications (chitosan, lithovit, selenium and yeast extract) and their interactions. Results indicated that the highest values of vegetative growth characteristics, i.e., plant height, number of branches, number of leaves, leaf area, fresh and dry weights as well as chemical constituents of leavesas photosynthetic pigments (Chl. a, Chl. b, total Chl. a+b and carotenoids) and leaf minerals content (N, P, K, Ca, Mg, Zn, Mn) were recorded when plants irrigated with magnetized water as compared with plants irrigated with untreated water in both studying seasons. On the other hand, Fe content responded negatively to irrigation with magnetized water.Comparing the effect of foliar applications, all foliar application treatments significantly enhanced vegetative growth parameters, leaf minerals and pigments contents compared to the check treatment. Foliar application of chitosan at 250 ppm is the superior in its effect on all the aforementioned characteristics followed by yeast extract at 10 g/L then lithovit at 1.5 g/L in the two seasons except for Fe content. The best results of both vegetative growth attributes and chemical constituents of leaves were recorded when plants irrigated with magnetized water and sprayed with chitosan at 250 ppm in both seasons. Thus, this treatment could be recommended to improve tomato plants performance under similar conditions of this study.