Consejeria de Agricultura y Agua de la Region de Murcia. Plaza Juan XXIII. 30008 Murcia, Spain. Instituto Murciano de Investigacion y Desarrollo Agrario y Alimentario. C/Mayor s/n. 30150 La Alberca. Murcia. Spain.
Key words: Yield, crop quality, total soluble solids (TSS), drought, stress, Solanum lycopersicon L.
Journal of Applied Horticulture, 2007, volume 9, issue 2, pages 97-100.
Abstract: Field studies were conducted to compare the yield and fruit quality of processing tomatoes in surface and subsurface drip irrigation, with 100 and 50% of crop evapotranspiration (ETc). The results showed that when irrigation was reduced by 50% ETc the subsurface treatment showed higher water content at root depth compared with the on-surface treatment. At 50% ETc subsurface irrigation yield increased by 66.5% compared with the surface treatment. However at 100% ETc no significant difference in total fruit yield was observed between irrigation methods. The superficial and water-stressed treatment increased the pH and the acidity of the fruits but the subsurface treatment did not show differences with respect to the full-irrigation treatments. Our results show that the subsurface drip irrigation method could be reasonably applied for processing tomato when water resources are limited.
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