Management of Biostimulant and Silicon in Mineral Nutrition and Quality of Cotton Fiber

Abstract

Silicon (Si) and biostimulant management have been proposed techniques to reduce the impacts of abiotic stresses and to increase the productivity of several crops, however, there are still few concise results of the management of this crop. The objective of this work was to evaluate the effects of biostimulant and silicon treatments on isolated or mixed applications on mineral nutrition, yield and fiber quality of two cotton varieties. For this, an experiment was carried out in a randomized block design in the municipality of Luís Eduardo Magalhães-BA, in a 4 × 2 factorial arrangement, with four replications, in which four biostimulant treatments (control, without application; Si; biostimulant; and Si + biostimulant) were evaluated in two cotton varieties (FM 954GLT and FM 983GLT). The nutrient content of leaves, relative water content, electrolyte leakage, fiber yield, and quality were evaluated, the data collected were submitted to the F test and means were compared by Tukey at 5% probability. At the end of the experiment, it was verified that the management of Si and biostimulants increase the integrity of the cell wall, the association of Si + biostimulant increases the levels of N, Fe and Si foliar and reduces the levels of B and Mn, and do not influence on yield and fiber quality.