article · Folia Horticulturae
Field trials conducted over two growing seasons evaluated how combining biochar with regulated deficit irrigation influences tomato fruit quality. Trials compared full irrigation with and without biochar against treatments where irrigation was reduced by thirty percent at specific growth stages: vegetative, flowering and fruit development, or fruit ripening. Adding ten percent biochar by weight improved soil moisture conservation and raised individual quality attributes. Deficit irrigation increased total soluble solids, the sugar-to-acid ratio, vitamin C content, and colour index, with the largest increases occurring when water restriction took place during the fruit ripening stage. Although deficit irrigation during flowering, fruit development, and ripening reduced single fruit weight and total yield, comprehensive multi-criteria evaluations ranked biochar amendment combined with water deficit at the ripening stage as the top-performing treatment across both seasons.
Tomato growers face competing demands to conserve water while maintaining high-value fruit characteristics such as taste, colour, and nutritional value. This research demonstrates that applying biochar alongside targeted water reduction specifically during fruit ripening enhances desirable fruit traits. Understanding these growth-stage responses helps vegetable producers balance water efficiency against potential crop yield trade-offs to improve overall crop marketability.
This applied and tested research offers practical insights for commercial greenhouse and vegetable enterprises aiming to optimise fruit quality while reducing irrigation. By applying biochar and carefully timing water restrictions to the ripening stage, growers can target premium market specifications for flavour, colour, and vitamin content. Further real-world validation at commercial scale is needed to evaluate whether the enhanced produce quality and water savings offset the observed reductions in overall yield.
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Abstract Quality of fresh produce is the most critical issue in the economics of a vegetable enterprise. In order to investigate the effect of biochar amendment and deficit irrigation on tomato fruit quality, experimental research was conducted under a rain shelter in southern China during the 2017 and 2018 growing seasons. The experiment consisted of five treatments. Crops were irrigated to 100% of field water capacity at all growth stages as treatments T1 and T2. The other treatments received 30% less irrigation water than T2 when its soil water content reached 70% of field capacity, and were designated as treatments T3, T4 and T5, applied at the vegetative (stage I), flowering and fruit development (stage II), and fruit ripening (stage III) stages, respectively. Treatment T1 included no biochar, while the other treatments included 10% biochar by weight. The results showed that the total soluble solids (TSS) content, sugar-to-acid ratio (SAR), vitamin C (VC) content, and colour index (CI) increased in the deficit irrigation treatments depending on the phenological stage, the fruit ripening stage in particular. Meanwhile, single fruit weight was significantly ( p < 0.05) reduced by water deficit at stages II and III, subsequently affecting the total fruit yield. Biochar improved soil moisture conservation and had a positive effect on fruit quality as evidenced by better single quality attributes ( p < 0.05) of T2 over T1. The GRA and TOPSIS appraisal methods were used to conduct the comprehensive quality analysis. Eventually, treatment T5 ranked the best in both seasons, and this was also confirmed by the combinational evaluation method.
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DOI: 10.2478/fhort-2019-0013
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