A study was carried out to evaluate the influence of the elephant-grass x leucena intercropping, in aspects like productivity, crude protein contents and tillering of the intercropped elephant grass, besides trying to find the best planting density of this intercropping, aiming both highest grass productivity and better produced forage quality. The experiment was carried out at the Fazenda Experimental Vale do Curu, located in Pentecoste- Ceará, using a completely randomized blocks design with four treatments and four replications. The used treatments were: elephant-grass x leucena intercropping in the following spacings: 1.00m x 0.25 m; 1.00m x 0.50m; 1.00m x 0.75m and 1.00m x 1.00m, between the lines and plants, respectively. Cuts were done each 60 days, being six cuts during the experimental period. Leucena and capim-elephant were cutted 40cm and 10cm above ground 10 cm above the soil. The intercropping using leucena did not influence elephant-grass crude protein contents. The smallest tillers number and the biggest dry matter production of the grass occurred in spacing 1.00m x 0.25m, being this the indicated for this intercropping.

The purpose of this work was to evaluate the effects of phosphor dosages and sources on productivity and fruit quality of yellow passion fruit. The experiment was carried out in orchards in Lavrasmunicipality, Minas Gerais, Brazil. The experimental outline used was a 2 X 5 factorial on a randomized complete block design, with four replicates. The treatments were composed by two phosphor sources (super triple phosphate and termophosphate) and five dosages (6, 30, 60, 90 and 120 g/plant). Productivity, fruit number per plant, juice yield, total soluble solids (TSS), total titratable acidity (TTA), ratio TSS/TTA and peel thickness were evaluated. There was no productivity increase or improvement of the fruit quality for the treatments, except for the increases of TTA and peel thickness when Yoorin termophosphate was used as fertilizer.

Seedling production is an important step for the tomato (L. esculentum) production system, being sometimes limited by cost and quality of the substrates used for this purpose. Use of agro-industrial residues, alone or in mixtures, may help reduce this problem. The potential of different mixtures of substrate including coconut dust treated with nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (PC), commercial substrate TropstratoÒ and organic compound (CO) were evaluated in order to obtain the best source and combinations of substrates. These materials were used alone or in volumetric basis mixtures at the proportions of PC+SC (1:1); PC+CO (1:1) and PC+SC+CO (1:1:1), for seedling production of tomato cv. Salada. The randomized block design was used, with six treatments and six replications. Obtained data were aerial dry matter (MS), emergence speed index (IVE), colon diameter (DC), leaf number (NF) and seedling height (AP). The best results were obtained for CO and PC+CO. CO performance probably is due to its higher nutritional value, once its physical characteristics do not differ from the remaining treatments, especially when compared to SC and PC. CO was the best substrate for tomato seedling production, and its addition to PC enhanced the performance. The use of organic residues for tomato seedling substrate composition is an economic option which may reduce production costs, and represents an alternative for recycling and subproduct usage in agro-industry.

The aim of this work was to examine the effect of different temperatures on germination of the seeds in O. canum. The seeds had been washed in under water and after immersed for 30s in water with environmenttemperature, 25, 30 (control), 50, 75 and 100ºC. After that it was immersed per 5 minutes in fungicidal solution and later washed by 10s with water and placed to germinate in plates of Petri conditioned in germination chamber regulated to provide temperature of 25 ± 1,0ºC and photoperiod of 12 hours. The completely randon design was used in experiment, with 5 treatments and 10 repetitions, resulting in 50 parcels. Each experimental unit wasconstituted of a plate of Petri contends 10 seeds. The averages had been compared by the Scott-Knott test at 5% level of probability. The germination rate was statistically equal in the control and the temperatures of 25, 50 and 75ºC, being superior to that one gotten to 100ºC. The temperature of 30ºC was the one that provided the biggest rate of germination, while that of 100ºC is not indicated for the breaking in dormancy of thisspecies, since it promoted the death of the embryo.

The postharvest shelflife of Galia Solarking melons was evaluated at the Postharvest Study Center, Escola Superior de Agricultura de Mossoró, RN, Brazil. The treatments consisted of submitting the hybrid to the experimental temperature at 5, 7, 9 and 11ºC under 90 ± 5% relative humidity, with or without modified atmosphere (MAP), with evaluations in nine days intervals (7 days under cold storage plus 2 days at room temperature), with the determination of weight loss, external and internal appearances, flesh firmness and total soluble solids content. A 4 x 2 x 5 (temperature x presence or absence of plastic film x time of storage) factorial scheme in a completely randomized design with three repetitions and one fruit per plot was utilized. Weight loss was smaller for the fruits under modified atmosphere. Larger values of flesh firmness were verified for fruits stored under modified atmosphere stored at 5ºC. Based on the external appearance, the postharvest shelflife of Solarking melons were 27 days for 5, 7 and 9ºC storage temperatures and 18 days for 11ºC.

The objective of this work was to evaluate the residual nitrogen contents behavior in a soil fertilized with four different nitrogen sources (ammonium sulfate, calcium nitrate, urea and monoamonium phosphate) at dosage of 80 kg.ha-1, divided in 2, 3, 4 and 5 parcels, applied through drip irrigation on the melon production, in field conditions, at the Fazenda Cajazeiras, located in Tibau, RN, Brazil. A 4 x 4 factorial, completely randomized block split-plot design, with four replications was used. Soil samples were collected before planting and 40 days after the first nitrogen use to the depth intervals of 0-15, 15-30, 30-45 and 45-60 cm, on which total mineral nitrogen, NH4 +, NO3 - e NO2- was determined. A differentiated behavior of the nitrogen sources regarding the ammonium furnishing to the soil was observed, existing a decreasing tendency of the ammonium contents with the increase of the fertilization partitioning and soil depth. For nitrate the highest concentrations were found on the surface interval and no effect of the fertilizer partitioning was observed. The highest concentrations of nitrite were found on the 30 - 45 cm depth interval and the total mineral nitrogen was concentrated mainly on the root absorption region. The biggest accumulation of total mineral nitrogen in the soil was originated from employment of MAP and ammonium sulfate and the lesser accumulation was due to urea use.

The total soluble solids content (TSSC) shows high positive correlation with sugars content, and therefore is generally accepted as an important quality trait of fruits. In melon, this evaluation is usually done by grinding a slice of the fruit's pulp in a household food processor, straining the ground material and then proceeding the TSSC determination in the resulting juice. This evaluation is labor-intensive and takes a long time to complete. An alternative process was delineated for obtaining the juice: the pulp of the fruit slice would be transversally cut one or more times, and longitudinally pressed by hand to obtain the juice. The objective of this work was to compare processes for obtaining juice to evaluate TSSC in melons. Fifty, 15, and 15 fruits of the Galia, Yellow, and Cantaloupe type melons were evaluated, respectively. Each fruit was considered as a block, and was longitudinally split into six fractions with similar sizes, which corresponded to the plots. The following treatments were evaluated: fraction without cuts, fractions with one, three, five, or seven transversal cuts, and the fraction treated by the conventional process. It was concluded that the procedure by which the melon slices of Galia, Yellow and Cantaloupe types are pressed for obtaining the juice to evaluate TSSC can overestimate this content. This would probably be due to the fact that the most internal section of the mesocarp presents greater TSSC than the portions closer to the epicarp.

Among ten valid species within Rotylenchulus genus, R. reniformis is the economically most important. Polyfagous, the reniform nematode has been detected associated to high value crops in Brazil. However, variability among or within Rotylenchulus spp. populations has been poorly understood and studied. Identification of Rotylenchulus species is based on morphological characters of immature females and presence of males, but there is a lack of biochemical researches. The objectives of this study were to morphometrically characterize one R. reniformis population associated to commercial melon (Cucumis melo) crop grown in Baraúnas municipality, Rio Grande do Norte State; to compare L, V and s mean values to the other populations characterized as R. reniformis, from different Brazilian and North American states, and African countries; to identify the parasitic race and to develop a protocol to define the a-esterase phenotype. The results confirmed the specific population identification focused in this research which confidence interval mean values of L, V and s enclosed mean values from the other populations. The Baraúnas-RN population was characterized as race A. The used protocols did not allow to characterize an a-esterase phenotype for R. reniformis.

The objective of this work was to study the influence of the seeds storage period of the Imbu Tree (Spondias tuberosa Arruda) in the germination percentage and germination velocity index. The study was carried out from January to December 2004 in a greenhouse with 50% shadowing screen, under room temperature, at Embrapa Tropical Semi-Arid, Petrolina, Pernambuco State, Brazil, in a randomized complete block design, with six treatments and four replications. The treatments consisted of seeds harvested in six different crops. The germination percentage and germination velocity index were evaluated at 30, 60, 90 and 120 days after sowing through daily counts. The seeds of 2001 and 2002 crops had the best performance in terms of emergence and germination velocity index.

This work had as objective to evaluate spatial variability of physical characteristics of a Typical Haplocambids (CX), under papaya culture, by means of the geostatistic. The analyzed area presented 43 sampling points , where soil samples were collected, in the layer of 0 ¿ 0.2 m. In the soil samples granulometry, soil bulk density, particles density, water content at tension of 0.03 and 1.5 MPa were measured. From these analyses the total porosity and water availability were calculated. Data were evaluated by descriptive statistics and by analysis of the spatial dependence based in semivariograms adjustment. The variation coefficient indicated low variability for total and coarse sand contents, water content at tension of 0.03 and 1.5 MPa, soil bulk and particles density and total porosity; and medium for clay, silt e available water contents. Except for water content at tension of 0.03 and 1.5 MPa and particles density, the other variables presented space dependence, being the spherical and exponential models adjusted to all the semivariograms. The nugget effect had small contribution in the data total variance, indicating strong spatial dependence for fine sand and clay contents, total porosity and available water. The other variables showed moderate dependence. There was a great variation in the distance until where the physical characteristics of the ground present spatial dependence (reach).