Abstract
ABSTRACT Adequate potassium and calcium nutrition is a strategy to reduce salt stress on tomatoes, as it reduces nutritional imbalance in plants. With the objective of evaluating tomato production using irrigation with saline waters and fertigation with different potassium-calcium proportions, an experiment was carried out in a protected environment in Mossoró, RN, Brazil. The experimental design used was randomized blocks, in a 5 x 4 factorial scheme, with four replicates. The treatments consisted of the combination of four electrical conductivity of nutrient solution (ECns) (1.75; 3.25; 4.75; and 6.25 dS m-1) combined with five ionic proportions (m/m) of potassium and calcium (F1 = 2.43:1; F2 = 2.03:1; F3 = 1.62:1; F4 = 1.30:1 and F5 = 1.08:1). The response variables were: number of fruits, mean fruit weight, fruit production per plant and relative yield. It was possible to identify satisfactory results of production when higher salinity was used. Fertigation with low K+/Ca2+ proportions intensifies the effect of salinity on tomato crop.
Highlights
Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) is one of the most cultivated and consumed vegetables in Brazil, standing out due to its important economic value for the country
Fertigation with low K+/Ca2+ proportions intensifies the effect of salinity on tomato crop
According to the analysis of variance, there was a significant effect of the interaction between the factors on the variables number of fruits (NFR) and production (PROD) (p ≤ 0.01), as well as on the mean fruit weight (MFRW) (p ≤ 0.05)
Summary
Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) is one of the most cultivated and consumed vegetables in Brazil, standing out due to its important economic value for the country. Tomato is cultivated in different periods of the year and under different management systems, virtually in all regions of Brazil (Matos et al, 2012), but its yield can be affected by various abiotic stresses. When irrigated with saline water above a threshold salinity, tomato crop shows physiological, biochemical and nutritional changes, which lead to reductions in growth and yield, due to a decrease in the number and weight of fruits (Guedes et al, 2015; Islam et al, 2018; Chen et al, 2019)
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