Saline water irrigation strategies in two production cycles of naturally colored cotton

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Scarcity of good quality water is a limiting factor for irrigated agriculture, especially in a semi-arid region, which induces the use of waters with high salt levels to irrigate crops. As a result, it becomes necessary to use salt tolerant genotypes and appropriate cultivation strategies that enable their production. With this focus, this study was carried out to evaluate the production components of three naturally colored cotton genotypes (‘BRS Rubi’, ‘BRS Topazio’, and ‘BRS Safira’), subjected to various irrigation management strategies, varying the stages of development in which plants were irrigated with saline water. The study also aimed to evaluate the influence of the water salinity level at which seeds were formed, in a new production cycle, using the same irrigation strategies and varying the phenological stages. There were seven salinity management strategies in the first year of cultivation and ten in the second year, both experiments were conducted in a randomized block design. Among the genotypes, ‘BRS Rubi’ was the most tolerant to salinity, with respect to the intrinsic characteristics of the fiber, regardless of the development stage. In the second production cycle, plants grown from seeds formed under salt stress during the stages of flowering and yield formation had increases in lint weight and fiber quality. In the second year, the oil content of the cotton genotypes was not compromised by the cumulative salt stress, considering seeds produced in plants irrigated with saline water in the previous cycle.