Abstract
To investigate better saline water irrigation scheme for tomatoes that scheduling with the compromise among yield (Yt), quality, irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE) and soil salt residual, an experiment with three irrigation quotas and three salinities of irrigation water was conducted under straw mulching in northern China. The irrigation quota levels were 280 mm (W1), 320 mm (W2) and 360 mm (W3), and the salinity levels were 1.0 dS/m (F), 3.0 dS/m (S1) and 5.0 dS/m (S2). Compared to freshwater, saline water irrigations decreased the maximum leaf area index (LAIm) of tomatoes, and the LAIm presented a decline tendency with higher salinity and lower irrigation quota. The best overall quality of tomato was obtained by S2W1, with the comprehensive quality index of 3.61. A higher salinity and lower irrigation quota resulted in a decrease of individual fruit weight and an increase of the blossom-end rot incidence, finally led to a reduction in the tomato Yt and marketable yield (Ym). After one growth season of tomato, the mass fraction of soil salt in plough layer under S2W1 treatment was the highest, and which presented a decline trend with an increasing irrigation quota. Moreover, compared to W1, soil salts had a tendency to move to the deeper soil layer when using W2 and W3 irrigation quota. According to the calculation results of projection pursuit model, S1W3 was the optimal treatment that possessed the best comprehensive benefit (tomato overall quality, Yt, Ym, IWUE and soil salt residual), and was recommended as the saline water irrigation scheme for tomatoes in northern China.
Highlights
Agricultural waters account for 95% of the total water consumption in the world [1]
LAIm under W1 irrigation quota presented most dramatic decrease, which of S2 was 13.2% lower than that of F, indicating that low irrigation quota combined with high salinity limited the increase of tomato leaf area
Under the three salinity levels, the tomato LAIm all increased as the increase of irrigation quota, of which 5 different treatments to Treatment electrical conductivity (EC) (dS/m) increased the tomato LAIm most significantly that was 17.0% compared between W1 and W3
Summary
For China, those irrigation areas of northern China, inadequate rainfall and limited surface water supply have seriously impeded the development of agriculture [2]. Saline Water Irrigation yields that was approximate 17 500 million kilogram every year. Because of the water shortages, some areas in northern China maintained the development of agriculture by excessively exploiting the underground water, and this resulted in a 500 000 km ground falls in the border regions of Beijing, Tianjing and Hebei province [3,4]. China has applied various technologies to deal with the water shortage problems in the northern irrigation areas, including the water conservancy engineering [5,6], the biological water-saving technology [7,8], the optimize arrangement of crops [9], the reclamation of sewage [10] and the saline water irrigation technology [11,12]
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