Effects of water stress on processing tomatoes yield, quality and water use efficiency with plastic mulched drip irrigation in sandy soil of the Hetao Irrigation District

Huimeng Zhang, Yunwu Xiong, Guanhua Huang, Xu Xu and Quanzhong Huang

Agricultural Water Management, 2017, vol. 179, issue C, 205-214

Abstract: Processing tomatoes are major cash crops in the Hetao Irrigation District, Inner Mongolia, China. Conventional irrigation practices have resulted in ecological and environmental problems due to the specific climate and groundwater conditions. Field experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of water stress on processing tomatoes yield, quality, and water use efficiency with plastic mulched drip irrigation in sandy soil of the Hetao Irrigation District. Tomatoes were irrigated at 40%, 60%, 70%, 80% and 100% of crop evapotranspiration (ETc). Results showed that soil water content and salt concentration mainly varied in the upper 60cm soil layer. Dry aboveground biomass and yield increased with increased ETc to 80 or 100%. The highest yield was obtained with 80% ETc treatment both years (70 and 81t/ha). Increasing water stress led to the increase of soluble solids content and Vitamin C. Actual evapotranspiration (ETa) ranged from 188 to 323mm in the two seasons, and increased quadratically when the irrigation depth increased to 80% ETc. The highest water use efficiency (WUE) was found at 60% ETc treatment in 2013 and 80% ETc treatment in 2014. Comprehensive analysis of yield, WUE and ETa, irrigated at 80% ETc was recommended as the optimal irrigation strategy in the sandy soil of the Hetao Irrigation District.

Keywords: Plastic mulch; Deficit irrigation; Lycopersicon esculentum Mill; Water use efficiency; Crop evapotranspiration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (43)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377416302682
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:agiwat:v:179:y:2017:i:c:p:205-214

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2016.07.022

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().