The performance of vegetable transplants using two irrigation systems in nurseries

Abstract

Irrigation plays an important role in the quality of plug plant production in crop nurseries. This study was carried out in order to evaluate the effects that different irrigation methods have on the growth and development of plant plugs of various crops. Two different irrigation methods were used in order to investigate and hence, compare the differences in growth and development of different vegetable crops. The irrigation methods that were used are the overhead irrigation and the sub-irrigation. Five different vegetable crops were chosen for the experiments, namely tomatoes, lettuce, cauliflower, peppers and melon, so that a wide range of results could be obtained for comparison purposes. The experimentations were initiated and terminated on the same days and were held in a greenhouse nursery, providing the same climatic conditions for all crops. Also, length and weight measurements were always taken and recorded at the same time, to obtain fair results. This research shows that there was a significant difference between the plug plants watered by sub-irrigation and those watered by overhead irrigation. This resulted in all crops, except the peppers. Sub-irrigation proved to grow the plants in a shorter time span and still having good quality. Moreover, root to stem ratio in sub-irrigation was more uniform that that of the overhead irrigation. Therefore, results obtained from this research indicate that plug plant producers would benefit more when using the sub-irrigation method to water their plants. This is due to the fact that transplant size is achieved before, thus less resources are used on the plants.