ABSTRACT:There are few studies in the specific literature on the use of cover materials to control evaporation in drought-stressed plants grown in pots under greenhouse conditions. The use of these materials is of great importance to ensure that water loss occurs only through transpiration. Thus this study aimed to investigate the efficiency of different cover materials -polyethylene, marble, polystyrene, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) -in controlling evaporation in black and in silver pots cultivated with the soybean cultivar BR 16 and subjected to drought under greenhouse conditions. The plants were kept at 100% field capacity until they reached the V 3 stage. The different cover materials were then applied to the substrate surface, irrigation was suspended, and the plants were evaluated with regard to water loss and temperature of leaf and substrate for nine consecutive days. The experiment was repeated without plants to assess evaporation. Substrate water potential was measured on the last day in both experiments. Although all the cover materials showed uniformity between the replicates with respect to water loss, polyethylene and PVC presented higher substrate water potential and leaf turgor after nine days of suspended irrigation; however, PVC led to soil compactions, restricting its use. Therefore, among the materials tested, polyethylene is the most suitable to control evaporation in pots cultivated with soybean plants subjected to drought, with no influence of pot color. (Oya et al., 2004;Stolf et al., 2009). The effect of the external color of pots -black or silver -was also investigated with respect to water loss through evaporation.
RESUMO:
Materials and MethodsThe experiments were conducted under greenhouse conditions. Soybean cultivar BR 16 seeds were previously treated with carboxin + thiram (200 g L -1 ) and phypronyl (250 g L -1 ) and then allowed to germinate for 96 h at 25 °C on Germitest paper moistened with water (2.5-fold volume relative to the weight of the dry paper) (Brasil, 2009). Thereafter, the seedlings were inoculated with Bradyrhyzobium japonicum (Nitro-Super F-45 Premium ) and planted in 1 L pots (dimensions: 15 cm external diameter × 10 cm base × 11 cm height) filled with substrate (soil/sand/organic compounds, 3:2:2), so that each pot contained one seedling. The greenhouse temperature was set at 28 ± 1 °C, with cooling system actuation when temperature reached 29 °C, and heating system actuation when temperature reached values below 16 °C. The internal temperature and relative humidity (RH) were recorded in a thermohygrograph (Hobo U14-002, Onset ) every 5 min. The vapor pressure deficit (VPD) was obtained from the Equation 1: The saturated vapor pressure (e s ) was calculated using the psychrometric chart available at http://physics.holsoft.nl/physics/ ocmain.htm. The partial vapor pressure (e a ) was obtained according to Rodrigues et al. (2011)
from the Equation 2:s a RH 100x e e = (2)The experimental design was completely randomized with a 2 × 5 (pot color × cover mate...