Relation between soilless tomato quality and potassium concentration in nutritive solution
2012
Ramírez S., L.F. | Díaz S., F.R. | Muro E., J.
The handling for ionic relations into nutritive solution with the hypothesis that potassium can improve quality of the tomato, through the influence of carotenoid syntheses in tomato fruits, was the main objective in this research work. Two experiments were carried out. 'Gabriela' tomato hybrid in soilless culture system within an intermediate technology greenhouse was used. In the vegetative stage a standard solution (SS) was applied and different solutions with different potassium concentrations (K) were applied in the reproductive stage (SR1 (20%K), SR2 (40% K), SR3 (60% K) and SR4 (45% K)); percentage of potassium in respect to cation total percentage. All nutritive solutions had values of 30 mg/L for total ionic concentration, 6.5, for pH and 3 dS/m approximately for EC. In the first experiment, three treatments (SR1, SR2 and SR3) with eight replications were tested. In the second experiment, two treatments (SR2 and SR4) with sixteen replications were used. Treatment SR4 ambles significantly to SR2 in all the quality parameters, except in beta-carotene and pH for each one of the selected clusters (1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th). Potassium affects significantly the concentration of pigments as lycopene and beta-carotene, which can be used as inner quality tomato indicators based on analytical and sensorial properties.
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