Yield of Solanum lycopersicum l. by applying nutrients with or without fertigation interacting with an analogue brassinosteroid

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the effect of fertigation and granular fertilizer to the soil interacting with foliar application of analogue brassinosteroids in Solanum lycopersicum L. Design/Methodology/Approach: The treatments were Fertigation (F), Fertigation plus brassinosteroids (F + BR), Granular fertilization (FG) and Granular fertilization + brassinosteroids (FG + BRs). A completely randomized design with four replicates was used, where one plant from each treatment represented the experimental unit. Plants (45 days-old) were sprayed with 2 mg L-1 of Brassinosteroid CIDEF-4 and subsequent applications were made every 28 d. Plant height and stem diameter were measured 92 d after transplantation, while the yield was obtained by weighing completely red fruits. An analysis of variance was performed using the GLM procedure and the Tukey means comparison test (p?0.05) with the SAS 9.3 program. Results: Fertigation induced greater plant growth and reproduction of the tomato compared to the granular fertilizer with, or without foliar application of the analogue brassinosteroid. Treatments with granulated fertilizers decreased plant height by 10.36% and 10.45% compared to fertigation. Tomato yield with granulated fertilization, with or without Br, corresponded to 76.6% and 75.80% of what was achieved with Fertigation + Br. Study limitations/Implications: The absence of a stressful environment did not favor the application of the analogue brassinosteroid. Findings/conclusions: Fertigation induces greater growth and yield of tomato under field conditions; and environmental temperature homogeneity did not favor morphological nor physiological expression of the analogue brassinosteroid.