Effect of water stress after flowering stage on tomato crop yield and soil water content in the semi-arid Peruvian coastline

To evaluate the effects of water stress on tomato at reproductive stages four irrigation treatments were established, based on the crop water requirements using the FAO methodology. At full flowering stage irrigation treatments were reduced in 50% until the end of harvesting season. T1 (150% to 75% of FAO ETc), T2 (100% to 50% of FAO ETc), T3 (75% to 33% of FAO ETc) and T4 (50% to 25% of FAO ETc). The experiment was laid out as a Latin square design with four treatments and four replicates. The soil in the experimental site is a loam with a depth of 70 cm and the following characteristics: saturation (SAT) 43%, field capacity (FC) 27% and wilting point (WP) 13%. Soil Volumetric water content at four depths (10, 20, 30 and 45 cm) was measured using a time domain reflectometry system (TDR) on the 3-hourly basis. Biometric destructive measurements were performed every 20 days to measure leaf area, dry mass production and nutrient content (NPK). Coverage images were taken on the weekly basis, resulting on a maximum coverage of 80%, 60%, 50% and 40% for T1, T2, T3 and T4 respectively. Tomato production was significantly affected by irrigation treatments. The highest yield was obtained with T1 (50.23 t ha-1), finding significant differences between this and T2, T3 and T4 yielding 25.98, 18.3 and 16.6 t ha-1 respectively. The three deficit treatments yielded below the national average yield (35 t ha-1), however for T1 produced 15 t.ha-1 additional yield, reducing water use in 90% compare to and average tomato farmer. In further research, we will use processed based mechanistic modelling to simulate the water transport dynamics under fertigation.cited By 0 document_type: Article source: Scopusstatus: publishe