Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

Published in

Taylor and Francis Group, The Journal of Horticultural Science and Biotechnology, 1(79), p. 59-66

DOI: 10.1080/14620316.2004.11511737

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Effect of night salinity level on water use, physiological responses, yield and quality of tomato

Journal article published in 2004 by Pietro Santamaria, Vito Cantore, Giulia Conversa, Francesco Serio ORCID
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

Full text: Download

Red circle
Preprint: archiving forbidden
Orange circle
Postprint: archiving restricted
Red circle
Published version: archiving forbidden
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

The aim of the research work was to evaluate the effects of two levels of electrical conductivity (EC) of the nutrient solution, i.e. high night and low day EC vs continuously low EC, on water consumption, physiological responses, yield, and fruit quality of two tomato cultivars (‘Diana’ and ‘Naomi’). The use of a nutrient solution with high EC during the night (6 dS m-1) did not modify the plant growth. The daily water consumption of tomato plants was not modified by the nutrient solution EC, however water consumption during the night was on average 9-19% of the total daily uptake. Both at the 2nd cluster setting stage and beginning of harvests, the high night and low day EC treatment decreased stomatal conductance (13%) and leaf net CO2 assimilation (8%). The values for ‘Diana’ and ‘Naomi’ of yield of tomato (4.5 and 3.0 kg plant-1, respectively, for ‘Diana’ and ‘Naomi’) or mass of fruits, fruit dry mass, titratable acidity, and ascorbic acid were not influenced by the nutrient solution EC. However, in the cherry tomato type (‘Naomi’) the number of fruits within optimal size values (< 40 mm), which is of crucial importance for their marketability, was higher with high EC in the night hours. The total soluble solids were higher with low/high (day/night) EC than continuously low EC (7.0 vs 6.6 °Brix for ‘Naomi’ and 4.6 vs 4.3 for ‘Diana’), so nutrient solutions with night high and low day EC appear to improve the quality of fruits of soilless grown tomato plants without to modify the fruit yield.