Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Effects of Zeolite and Deficit Irrigation on Sweet Pepper Growth

Donato Castronuovo
ORCID logo ,
Antonio Satriani
* ORCID logo ,
Anna Rita Rivelli
ORCID logo ,
Alessandro Comegna
,
Claudia Belviso
,
Antonio Coppola
,
Simone Di Prima
,
Francesco Cavalcante
,
Stella Lovelli
ORCID logo
Version 1 : Received: 13 October 2023 / Approved: 13 October 2023 / Online: 16 October 2023 (10:00:27 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Castronuovo, D.; Satriani, A.; Rivelli, A.R.; Comegna, A.; Belviso, C.; Coppola, A.; Di Prima, S.; Cavalcante, F.; Lovelli, S. Effects of Zeolite and Deficit Irrigation on Sweet Pepper Growth. Horticulturae 2023, 9, 1230. Castronuovo, D.; Satriani, A.; Rivelli, A.R.; Comegna, A.; Belviso, C.; Coppola, A.; Di Prima, S.; Cavalcante, F.; Lovelli, S. Effects of Zeolite and Deficit Irrigation on Sweet Pepper Growth. Horticulturae 2023, 9, 1230.

Abstract

The use of zeolite in agriculture as a soil conditioner is becoming an important field of research in crop growth. To study the effect of synthetic zeolite and deficit irrigation on sweet pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) cultivation, an experiment in a controlled environment was conducted. In particular, sweet pepper was cultivated in a glasshouse using polypropylene pots filled with sandy-loam soil to which 2% of zeolite was added. The zeolite employed in the experiments was obtained using coal fly ash as raw material. The experiment was planned in order to have two main treatments consisting of a) soil with zeolite at 2% (Z) and b) soil without zeolite, as control (C), and three subplot treatments consisting of 1) full irrigation at 100% of available water content (AWC) (100); 2) deficit irrigation at 70% of AWC (70); 3) deficit irrigation at 50% of AWC (50). Sweet pepper cultivation started on the 24th April 2023 and lasted until the 23th June 2023 and during the trial environmental data, such as soil humidity, air temperature and relative humidity, and some crop parameters, such as plant height, leaf number, SPAD index, were monitored. At the end of the trial, fresh and dry plant weight, dry matter content, and leaf water potential were measured. Results showed that for plant fresh weight and dry matter content, no significant differences were observed by treatments and their interactions whereas for the other parameters the statistical analysis returned significant differences. The study suggests that the soil structural benefits, resulting from the zeolite application, are not followed by an equal positive effect in terms of sweet pepper growth under deficit irrigation conditions.

Keywords

soil amendments; zeolite; available water content; irrigation; water use efficiency

Subject

Biology and Life Sciences, Agricultural Science and Agronomy

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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