Changes of root zone temperature, growth and productivity of broccoli cultivated with coloured plastic mulches

El-Sayed Khater, Ramy Hamouda and Harby Mostafa
Additional contact information
El-Sayed Khater: Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, Benha University, Qalyobia, Egypt
Ramy Hamouda: Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, Benha University, Qalyobia, Egypt

Research in Agricultural Engineering, 2020, vol. 66, issue 3, 112-121

Abstract: The main aim is to find out the influence of using coloured plastic mulches (blue, white, green, red, black and white on black) compared with a mulch-free treatment on the root zone temperature, growth and productivity of broccoli. The results indicated that the highest and lowest mean root zone temperatures were recorded the in the dark-coloured mulches (blue, green, red and white on black) and in the light-coloured mulches (white), respectively, in both the winter and spring seasons. The average shoot length, leaf number and root volume of the broccoli for all the treatments was higher in the spring season compared with those of the winter season. The highest marketable head fresh weight values were 449.6 and 451.0 g found in the black mulch, while the lowest values were 391.4 and 397.5 g found in the winter and spring seasons for the red mulch, respectively. The N, P, K, Ca and Mg concentrations in the broccoli heads ranged from 2.0 to 2.8%, 0.9 to 1.0%, 2.7 to 3.6%, 1.9 to 5.9% and 0.5 to 0.89%, respectively, for all the treatments.

Keywords: soil cover; soil heat; plant root; nutrients uptake (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://rae.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/84/2019-RAE.html (text/html)
http://rae.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/84/2019-RAE.pdf (application/pdf)
free of charge

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:caa:jnlrae:v:66:y:2020:i:3:id:84-2019-rae

DOI: 10.17221/84/2019-RAE

Access Statistics for this article

Research in Agricultural Engineering is currently edited by Bc. Michaela Polcarová

More articles in Research in Agricultural Engineering from Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ivo Andrle ().