Abstract
ABSTRACT The study of the water energetic status under saline condition and its impact on the development of cowpea is of extreme importance, since this crop is the food base in many parts of the world. An experiment was carried out in a greenhouse from March to May 2014 using the cultivar IPA 206 in Fluvisol collected in the municipality of Pesqueira, PE, Brazil. Waters with six levels of electrical conductivity (0; 2.5; 5; 7.5; 10; 12.5 dS m-1) formulated with NaCl and a salt mixture were used. The experiment was conducted in randomized blocks in a 6 x 2 factorial arrangement with four replicates, forming 48 experimental plots. The matric, osmotic and total potential of water in the soil, the osmotic, and water potential in the plant and atmospheric potential were determined. Plant and soil osmotic potentials decreased with the increase in irrigation water electrical conductivity, which contributed to the decrease in plant water potential. There was no significant difference between the salts used in the composition of the irrigation water for the potentials evaluated in the soil and in the plant; there was no equilibrium between soil and plant water potentials at predawn.
Highlights
Soil salinity is considered as one of the environmental factors that most limit crop development and yield, and occurs in more than 100 countries (Rengasamy, 2006; Lv et al, 2012), becoming a problem especially in arid and semiarid regions worldwide, which are susceptible to this process because of the conditions of low rainfall and high balance of solar energy available to the evaporation process.The use of saline water or the cultivation in already salinized soils causes yield loss in the crops and has become a common problem in the world, because most cultivated plants are glycophytes and, sensitive to salinity (Adolf et al, 2013).Various crops have been evaluated when cultivated under the effect of saline stress
Due to the socioeconomic importance of the bean crop and the advance of salinity in various regions of the world, this study aimed to evaluate the effects of salinity on the cowpea crop (IPA 206) cultivated with saline water at increasing salt concentrations (0; 2.5; 5; 7.5; 10 and 12.5 dS m-1) prepared with NaCl and with a mixture of salts similar to the field conditions, as well as the energetic state of the water in the soil-plantatmosphere system
Similar results were found by other authors, such as Razzaghi et al (2011), who observed that soil water potential decreased with the increment in salinity, and Coelho et al (2014), who cultivated cowpea under different EC values and observed reduction of the osmotic potential in a sandy loam Neosol and in a clay loam Neosol
Summary
Soil salinity is considered as one of the environmental factors that most limit crop development and yield, and occurs in more than 100 countries (Rengasamy, 2006; Lv et al, 2012), becoming a problem especially in arid and semiarid regions worldwide, which are susceptible to this process because of the conditions of low rainfall and high balance of solar energy available to the evaporation process.The use of saline water or the cultivation in already salinized soils causes yield loss in the crops and has become a common problem in the world, because most cultivated plants are glycophytes and, sensitive to salinity (Adolf et al, 2013).Various crops have been evaluated when cultivated under the effect of saline stress. The use of saline water or the cultivation in already salinized soils causes yield loss in the crops and has become a common problem in the world, because most cultivated plants are glycophytes and, sensitive to salinity (Adolf et al, 2013). Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.) is one of these crops and is classified as moderately sensitive to salinity (Grieve et al, 2012), it has cultivars developed to increase its tolerance to saline stress, such as IPA 206, classified as moderately tolerant to salinity (Dantas et al, 2002). IPA 206, a cultivar developed at the Agricultural Research Institute of Pernambuco-IPA-PE, is widely used due to its tolerance to water and saline stress conditions, as well as in soils with low fertility (Nascimento et al, 2011). According to Ayers & Westcot (1999), the threshold value of electrical conductivity for the normal development of cowpea is 3.3 dS m-1 in the irrigation water and 1.3 dS m-1 in the saturation extract. Souza et al (2011), cultivating cowpea under saline stress, and Coelho et al (2013), using a mixture of NaCl and CaCl2, with 0, 4, 8 and 12 dS m-1, cultivated cowpea under saline stress and found physiological alterations during the development of the crop
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