Water stress mitigation by silicon in sweet-potato

Abstract

The objective was to evaluate the effect of the reduction in the irrigation blades under silicate fertilization via soil on growth, branch emission, production of fresh phytomass of aerial part, yield of marketable tuberous roots, and agricultural water use efficiency by plants of the sweet-potato variety Campina, with purple skin. The treatments were arranged in subdivided plots, distributed into randomized blocks, using a 2x5 factorial scheme with three repetitions, totaling 30 experimental units. The plots were two irrigation blades of 100 and 50% of the crop evapotranspiration – (ETc) and the subplots corresponded to the silicon doses of 0.0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 g plant-1. At the end of the experiment, the following variables were evaluated: stem diameter, branch emission, fresh phytomass of aerial part, phytomass of marketable tuberous roots, yield, and water use efficiency by plants. According to the results, the reduction from 100 to 50% of the ETc caused inhibition of growth, production of fresh phytomass of aerial part, and yield of marketable tuberous roots. The crop revealed to be more sensitive to water stress regarding yield than regarding growth or biomass formation by the aerial part and marketable tuberous roots.