Nutritional regime in chilhuacle I: autumn-winter cycle

Abstract

Due to the scarcity of information on the nutrition of chilhuacle, the objective of the research was to evaluate the growth, yield and physical quality of chilhuacle fruits in response to the nutritional regime in the autumn-winter cycle. Eight nutritional regimes were supplied considering the phenological stages of the species: vegetative, reproductive and fruiting. The experimental design was completely randomized, with five repetitions and one plant per experimental unit, which was a black polyethylene container with a capacity of 15 L with red tezontle as a substrate. The distance between plants was 50 cm in a staggered topological arrangement. Nutrient solutions were supplied by a drip irrigation system. The results indicated that, in the autumn-winter cycle, with a period of 168 days (average temperature of 20.2 °C) considered from transplantation to the last harvest, the nutritional regime that consisted of supplying 14 mEq L-1 of NO3- in the vegetative stage (duration 21 days), 10:0.75:9.25 mEq L-1 of NO3-:H2PO4-: SO42- in the reproductive stage (31 days) and 12:7 mEq L-1 of NO3-:K+ in the fruiting stage (116 days) significantly increased the leaf area, dry matter of stem, of leaf, of fruit, of the whole plant, the number of fruits per plant and the yield of fresh and dry matter of fruits per plant, while the percentage of large fruits (> 4 g) was 63.64% and of medium fruits (2 to 3.9 g) was 36.36%.