Back to Contents

Pak. J. Bot., 49(1): 77-83, 2017.

FREE FULL TEXT PDF

EFFECT OF IRRIGATION AND FERTILIZATION ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND FATE OF NITROGEN IN GREENHOUSE TOMATO (SOLANUM LYCOPERSICUM L.)

XIUKANG WANG^* AND YINGYING XING

College of Life Science, Yan'an University, Yan'an, Shaanxi 716000, PR China

^*Corresponding author’s e-mail: wangxiukang@126.com

Abstract

A greenhouse experiment using tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L., cv. ‘Jinpeng 10’) was conducted to investigate the fate and transport of nitrogen using different methods of irrigation and fertilization. Three treatments were designed with two irrigation methods (drip irrigation and furrow irrigation) and two fertilizer application methods (fertigation and conventional fertilization). Tomato fruit yield and biomass in the fertigation treatment were significantly higher than those in the conventional fertilization treatment. The highest total uptake of nitrogen by tomato was obtained with drip fertigation and increased significantly in the conventional fertilization and CK treatments. With an increase in nitrate uptake by the fruit, the uptake of the leaf nitrogen also increased in both years of the study. The distribution of the soil nitrate-N concentration tended to be symmetrical along the center of the emitter for drip irrigation and the furrows. The nitrate-N concentration in the CK treatment was 2.85-fold higher than that in the drip fertigation treatment. The proportion of nitrogen uptake of the total nitrogen input varied from 25.38% and 53.73% in two consecutive years, and the residual nitrogen in the fertigation treatment was 48.20% and 44.64% lower than that in the CK treatment in the same two respective years.

Key words: Fertigation, Fruit yield, Nitrogen uptake rate, Soil nitrate-N content, Nitrogen residual.