Elsevier

Scientia Horticulturae

Volume 275, 3 January 2021, 109710
Scientia Horticulturae

Responses of growth, fruit yield, quality and water productivity of greenhouse tomato to deficit drip irrigation

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scienta.2020.109710Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Full irrigation (100 %ETc) improved plant growth and yield of greenhouse tomato.

  • 75 %ETc obtained higher WUE and lower unmarketable yield.

  • 100 %ETc tended to shorten rapid growth period of aboveground biomass and improve maximum growth rate.

  • The lowest total water consumption occurred at the blooming and setting stage.

Abstract

Agriculture is the largest consumer of scarce water resources and irrigation serves as the sole source of water for greenhouse tomato production. It is an urgent task to seek an appropriate deficit irrigation strategy that is beneficial for high marketable yield, fruit quality, saving irrigation water and ultimately improving water use efficiency. A four-season experiment was conducted on drip-irrigated greenhouse tomato during Autumn 2015-Spring 2017 with three irrigation regimes, i.e., 100 %ETc (crop evapotranspiration) (W1), 75 %ETc (W2) and 50 %ETc (W3). The results showed that aboveground biomass, leaf area index (LAI), plant height and fruit yield increased with increasing irrigation amount. However, soluble solids, vitamin C and soluble sugar of tomato fruits were lowest under W1. W2 markedly reduced unmarketable fruits and more small-sized fruits were harvested at the late stage under W1. Through fitting the relationship between cumulative temperature and aboveground biomass using logistic equations, it was found that average duration of the rapid growth period (td) and the time when growth rate reached the maximum value (tm) increased as irrigation amount decreased. Conversely, the maximum growth rate during the rapid growth period (vm) decreased with the increase of water deficit. The highest total water consumption (278.05 mm), lowest total yield water use efficiency (25.12 kg m−3) and marketable yield water use efficiency (22.87 kg m−3) were obtained under W1. The smallest total water consumption (27.01–50.75 mm) occurred at the blooming and setting stage. Based on the results of path analysis, aboveground biomass and average fruit weight were important indexes affecting yield positively. It is concluded that deficit drip irrigation with 75 %ETc has the potential of supporting tomato growth, improving marketable yield and WUE as a result of less unmarketable yield and bigger fruit size.

Introduction

Water is becoming an economical scarce resource in many regions around the world, especially in arid and semi-arid areas (Buttaro et al., 2015). Irrigation for food production is the largest consumer of global freshwater resources, accounting for ∼70 % of withdrawals (FAO, 2017). However, less than 60 % of the water used for irrigation is effectively consumed by crops (Calzadilla et al., 2011). Rising population implies a growing demand for foods, consequently a greater agricultural water consumption, pushing water resources to limits, which has become an increasingly serious problem globally (Coyago-Cruz et al., 2019). In order to secure more water for agricultural production, saving water and improving water use efficiency (WUE) by using water-saving irrigation techniques (e.g., drip irrigation) are thus urgently needed (Jacobsen et al., 2012; Fan et al., 2016, 2017; Wang et al., 2018). Extensive studies have shown that water-stressed conditions have the potential to improve WUE (Agbemafle et al., 2014; Bogale et al., 2016; Yang et al., 2017). The highest WUE was obtained under moderate water-stressed irrigation condition in a sub-humid climate (Kuscu et al., 2014b). Severe water-stressed irrigation, however, reduced WUE (Kuscu et al., 2014a). Various climate and soil conditions as well as tomato cultivars are important factors influencing WUE (Zhang et al., 2017). Therefore, agricultural research should shift its focus from maximizing total production to enhancing the availability of water, consequently decreasing the use of irrigation water as much as possible. The relationship between deficit irrigation regime and WUE still needs to be further investigated.

Greenhouse has become one of the most active industries in agricultural structure used to maintain a controlled environment suitable and prolong the growing season throughout the year for optimum crop production and maximum profits (Du et al., 2015; Salokhe et al., 2005; Yang et al., 2017; Li et al., 2019; Ni et al., 2019). Greenhouse farming primarily relies on irrigation as the only source of water for crop growth due to its enclosed space. Tomato, one of the most commonly consumed vegetables grown mainly in greenhouse, has high water demand and requires irrigation throughout the growing season (Erba et al., 2013; Wang et al., 2015). Previous studies have demonstrated that ripe tomato fruit normally contains about 95 % water by volume (Beckles, 2012). Local farmers always blindly irrigate greenhouse tomato in excess in order to pursue high yield, which not only leads to wasting irrigation water and worsening the supply-demand balance for water resources (Li et al., 2017a), but also promotes nitrogen leaching, nitrous oxide emission and soil salinization (Norse and Ju, 2015). High irrigation amount tends to cause excessive biomass accumulation by tomato plants, thereby more or less reducing yield (Liu et al., 2013; Wang and Xing, 2016). Thus, an effective water supply needs to be explored urgently to maintain and even enhance production of greenhouse tomato.

Marketable yield, fruit quality, size and picking time of tomato varying with water stress levels are key factors affecting farmers’ economic profits. Firstly, many studies showed that water deficit at certain levels decreased tomato yield (Cantore et al., 2016; Patanè et al., 2011). However, Nangare et al. (2016) reported that as compared with the full irrigation, the regulated deficit irrigation (0.8RDI) did not affect the marketable fruit yield in an area highly prone to drought in India. Wang et al. (2007) also found that yield was not significantly affected under water-stressed irrigation in a silt loam soil in the North China Plain. Therefore, the effects of water stress on tomato yield vary widely under various soil and climate conditions. Secondly, the response of tomato fruit quality to water stress is of great concern. Extensive research has shown that soluble solids content and vitamin C are improved under certain water-stressed levels (Ozbahce and Tari, 2010; Patanè et al., 2011). Besides, firmness and titratable acidity increased with a decrease in irrigation amount in the coastal savannah zone of Ghana (Agbemafle et al., 2014). Thirdly, the occurrence of water deficit stress has a profound effect on the physiological functioning of crops. Van Leeuwen et al. (2009) pointed out that the ripening speed of grape was largely determined by water status. Its ripening may be delayed, particularly when the grape yield was high. Water stress affected the growth stage of crops to a greater or lesser extent (Patanè and Cosentino, 2010). However, to date, there are few studies investigating the effect of deficit irrigation on ripening time and fruit size of greenhouse crops, due to complex statistical work at harvest. Therefore, it is urgent to understand how water deficit levels affect fruit yield, quality, size and picking time of greenhouse tomato at harvest under various irrigation regimes.

Water demand of tomato varies at different growth stages. Several researchers have found the most sensitive phenological stages to water stress were flowering and fruiting stages, based on deficit irrigation at certain tomato growth stages (Chen et al., 2014; Nangare et al., 2016; Ripoll et al., 2016). During fruit ripening, the reduction in irrigation amount has been proved to improve the content of soluble solids of processing tomato (Johnstone et al., 2005). Hence, total water consumption at each growth stage of greenhouse tomato needs to be further explored as lower limits of irrigation as a reference, while reduced irrigation is applied at growth stages when tomatoes are less susceptible to water stress.

Environmental temperature greatly influences the growth and development of tomato (Van Ploeg and Heuvelink, 2005). The use of growth models to describe the relationship between crop growth and temperature is common in agricultural studies. Among growth models, the logistic model as the most frequently used model, has performed well in dynamic crop growth simulation (Ding et al., 2019; Yin et al., 2003). The logistic model has been used to describe fruit growth of tomato (Almanza-Merchán et al., 2016), pepper (Wubs et al., 2012) and peer (Ribeiro et al., 2018), as well as plant growth of winter wheat and summer maize (Ding et al., 2019). However, there is still a lack of satisfactory research that can directly relate the cumulative quantity of tomato plant growth indicators influencing yield greatly to thermal unit accumulation (e.g., growing degree days).

In this study, a greenhouse experiment with three irrigation regimes was conducted over four consecutive growing seasons to reveal the responses of tomato plant growth, fruit quality, yield and water consumption under full and deficit drip fertigation. The objectives of this study were to: (1) explore the suitable deficit irrigation strategy for greater yield, fruit size and quality and eventually higher WUE of greenhouse tomato; (2) investigate the dynamic characteristics of key growth indexes affecting tomato yield based on the logistic growth model; and (3) further understand the water consumption at each growth stage of tomato to propose scientific basis on how to optimize water-saving irrigation.

Section snippets

Site description

A greenhouse experiment was conducted from August 2015 to July 2017 at the Key Laboratory of Agricultural Soil and Water Engineering in Arid Area (34°20′ N, 108°04′E; 521 m a.s.l), Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University, Yangling, Shaanxi Province, China. This region experiences a semi-humid but drought-prone climate, with annual average temperature, precipitation and evaporation of 13 °C, 585 mm and 1500 mm, respectively. The physical and chemical properties of soils in the 0−20 cm

Tomato plant growth

The changes of aboveground biomass, plant height and leaf area index (LAI) accumulation over time in the three irrigation treatments are shown in Fig. 1. Average aboveground biomass of tomato in spring (2016 and 2017) was 976.44, 992.04 and 656.99 kg ha−1 larger than that in autumn (2015 and 2016) under W1, W2 and W3, respectively. Aboveground biomass accumulation generally increased with increasing irrigation amount. Average aboveground biomass accumulation over the four growing seasons was

Discussion

This study showed that leaf area index, plant height, aboveground biomass and tomato yield increased with increasing irrigation amount over the four growing seasons. In accordance with the present results, previous studies have demonstrated that deficit irrigation regimes decreased the vegetative growth and fruit yield (Agbna et al., 2017; Kuscu et al., 2014a). Giuliani et al. (2017) also pointed out that yield significantly decreased with the reduction in the quantity of water supplied. At the

Conclusions

Aboveground biomass, leaf area index, plant height and yield increased with increasing irrigation amount. However, soluble solids, vitamin C and soluble sugar of tomato fruits were diluted in full irrigation (100 %ETc). Irrigation with 100 %ETc and 50 %ETc harvested 28.76 % and 30.59 % more unmarketable fruits than that of 75 %ETc. Full irrigation with 100 %ETc yielded more small-sized and late fruits. The path analysis showed that aboveground biomass and average fruit weight were important

CRediT authorship contribution statement

You Wu: Investigation, Data curation, Validation, Conceptualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Shicheng Yan: Investigation, Conceptualization, Visualization, Methodology. Junliang Fan: Supervision, Resources, Writing - review & editing. Fucang Zhang: Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Writing - review & editing. Youzhen Xiang: Investigation, Data curation, Formal analysis. Jing Zheng: Investigation, Data curation, Software. Jinjin Guo:

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest

Acknowledgments

This study was jointly supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2017YFC0403303), the Youth Talent Cultivation Program of Northwest A&F University (No. 2452020010) and the “111” Project (B12007).

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