Evaluation of Suitable Mixture of Water and Air for Processing Tomato in Drip Irrigation in Xinjiang Oasis

Abstract

Aerated irrigation (AI) has emerged as a method to mitigate rhizosphere hypoxia caused by wetting front with sub-surface drip irrigation (SDI). Increasing oxygen in processing tomato’s root zone is beneficial to the improvement of the rhizosphere gas environment, crop growth, yield and quality. The relationship between aerated irrigation and irrigation quantity is not clear. A total of eight treatments, including four irrigation levels (4950 m3 hm−2 (W1), 4750 m3 hm−2 (W2), 4500 m3 hm−2 (W3), 4050 m3 hm−2 (W4)) in combination with aerated irrigation (A2) and non-aerated irrigation (A1) were used to investigate the effects of aerated irrigation on the physiological characteristics and yield of processing tomatoes under mulched drip irrigation in Xinjiang, China. The effects of aerated irrigation on plant height, stem diameter, leaf area index and dry matter, photosynthesis, fluorescence, fruit quality and yield of processing tomatoes were studied. The results showed that plant height, stem diameter, biomass accumulation and leaf area index of processing tomatoes under aerated irrigation were increased by 10.2%, 7.3%, 12.5% and 6.2% under the W1, W2, W3 and W4 conditions (p < 0.05), respectively, compared with non-aerated irrigation. Yield and the content of Vitamin C and soluble solids under aerated irrigation was 9.71%, 5.59% and 5.68% (p < 0.05) higher than that under conventional irrigation, respectively, and the sugar-acid under aerated irrigation decreased by 0.5%. Through principal component analysis, W2A2 treatment had a higher score according to the yield index (per fruit weight, fruit number per plant) and quality index (Vitamin C, soluble solids, sugar-acid ratio) than the other treatments. The results show that aerated irrigation is feasible under the existing mulched drip irrigation in Xinjiang and, in this experiment, W2A2 treatment was the most suitable planting mode.

Influence and Selection of Nitrogen and Phosphorus Compound Fertilizers on Emitter Clogging Using Brackish Water in Drip Irrigation Systems

“…Where AIW is the annual irrigation water of a crop, with reference to the annual irrigation amount of cotton (Wang et al, 2022b), tomato (Wei et al, 2021), rice (Ma et al, 2019) and winter wheat (Zhang et al, 2016) in Xinjiang, China, In this study, the annual irrigation water per hectare was 3000-9000 m 3 .…”