Browsing by Author "Ran, Wenjun"

The application of the split root fertigation (SRF) on strawberry cv. Elsanta (Fragaria × ananassa Duch.) was tested in a greenhouse. Responses of strawberry plants under SRF treatments were evaluated by investigating plant water use, plant vegetative growth, berry yield, and berry quality. In this experiment. Strawberry plants had their roots separated evenly into two parts and grown in containers with two compartments in peat. In the traditional fertigation (TF), the control in the experiment, irrigation water with equal electrical conductivity (EC) (1.4 mS/cm) was applied to both root compartments. Three levels of SRF treatments with low, medium, and high mean EC in irrigation water were designed for the experiment. In these SRF treatments, half of roots received the irrigation solutions with lower EC value of 0.7 mS/cm, the other half of roots received irrigation solutions with EC values of 1.4 mS/cm (SRF1), 2.8 mS/cm (SRF2), and 4.2 mS/cm (SRF3). For plant growth, leaf number, petiole length, runner number and dry weight, plant dry weight, leaf nutrient contents, and flowering date were examined. For yield and berry quality, total fresh yield, total berry number, average berry fresh and dry weight, shelf life, contents of total soluble solids (TSS), titratable acid (TA), total phenolics, and ascorbic acid were measured. For plant water use, substrate water content (?) and EC, leakage amount and EC were recorded; water use efficiency (WUE) and water uptake percentage were calculated to investigate the water use. Compared to TF, plants under SRF treatments showed differences in some parameters. Plants grown under SRF2 had highest total leaf area, although no differences in total plant dry weight were observed; leaf Mg was improved by SRF treatments, leaf N increased by SRF with high EC (SRF3), and leaf B and Mn decreased in SRF with low EC (SRF1). More lateral roots were found of plants under SRF treatment. Plant flowering was accelerated in the medium SRF treatment. For fruit quality, berry size was reduced in SRF3, which was in consistent with the response of strawberry grown under salinity stress. TSS/TA decreased in SRF3. In all SRF treatments, more water was taken up from root compartment with the lower EC value. However, the total water uptake amount had no differences. As a conclusion, SRF treatments affected the plant water uptake distribution, plant vegetative growth, yield and yield quality in some parameters, but results were not consistent in this experiment. Treatments with more EC combinations in a wider range are recommended for further studies.