Salt stress and leaching fraction in cowpea culture

Abstract

Salt stress negatively affects the agronomic performance of agricultural crops. In this sense, the objective of this work was to evaluate growth and soil saturation extract parameters (EC and pH) in cowpea crop irrigated with saline water under different leaching fractions. The experiment was conducted in the experimental area of the Auroras Seedling Production Unit, which belongs to the Universidade da Integração Internacional da Lusofonia Afro-Brasileira. The design used was entirely randomized, in a 5x2 factorial scheme, referring to five leaching fractions (0; 5; 10; 15 and 20%) and two electrical conductivities of the irrigation water (0.3 and 4.0 dS m -1 ), with five repetitions. The leaf area, aboveground and root dry mass were negatively affected with the increase of the leaching fraction, however, with less intensity with water of lower salinity. Increasing the leaching fraction increased the number of leaves, stem diameter, and pH, but more efficiently with the lower salinity water. The increase of the leaching fraction associated with water of higher salinity increased the electrical conductivity of the saturation extract of the soil.