Quality of tomato production depending on the applied irrigation rate and fertigation

Evgeni Dimitrov and Ivanka Miteva

Abstract: During the period 2018-2020, on leached Cinnamon forest soil at outdoor irrigation conditions, studies were conducted with determinant tomato variety Nikolina F1 – medium early production. The influence of 50 and 100% irrigation rates and increasing fertilization by fertigation (N15P8 K15; N20P1 2K20 и N25P16K25) on the quality of the formed production has been established. The results of the three-year study show higherп quality indicators in tomatoes with reduced irrigation compared to 100% irrigation rate – 6.0% higher dry matter content, 12.3% more total sugars, 16.99% higher sugar-acid number, as well as an acid content reduced by 8.3%. In terms of dry matter, total sugars and sugar-acid number the variant fertilized with N20P12K20 is optimal for both irrigation rates. In both irrigation rates, there is a trend for the acid content in the fruits to increase with the fertilizer rate, while in the case of ascorbic acid, there are no pronounced trends over the years. The regression dependences represented by polynomial equations between the quality indicators for tomatoes and the applied fertilization depending on the irrigation rate show high values of the coefficients of determination (R2 between 0.58 and 0.99), except for the dry matter and total sugars at full irrigation rate in 2020

Keywords: absolute dry matter; ascorbic acid; drip irrigation; mineral fertilization; mutual acids; tomato; total sugars

Date published: 2022-08-19