Abstract The middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River present high rainfall and always have a high water table. Recently drip fertigation has been introduced and widely used for vegetable… Click to show full abstract
Abstract The middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River present high rainfall and always have a high water table. Recently drip fertigation has been introduced and widely used for vegetable production in this area. To investigate the effect of shallow groundwater and the newly-developed fertigation on the cucumber water and nitrogen (N) requirement, experiments were carried out in plastic tunnels in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, China, during the 2016 and 2017 growing seasons using a randomized block design with three replicates. Four N rates, 4 irrigation amounts and 2 irrigation intervals (2 d and 4 d) were applied in this experiment. The results showed that irrigation amount of 75% of estimated plant evapotranspiration (ETc) was optimal to obtain the highest yield, indicating shallow groundwater had a considerable contribution to the cucumber plant evapotranspiration in this condition. Fertigation technology improved the irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE) and N use efficiency (NUE) and 75% of the recommended N rate (calculated according to a traditional local nutrient balance method) optimized cucumber yield. Frequent irrigation with low water volume had a beneficial impact on the improvement of cucumber yield, IWUE, NUE and reduced the N leaching. According to this work, the recommended fertigation strategy is 0.75 of recommended N, 0.75 estimated ETc and 2 d irrigation interval in this experiment, in which cucumber yield of 105.4 Mg ha−1, IWUE of 41.1 kg m-3 and NUE of 356.4 kg kg−1 were achieved.
               
Click one of the above tabs to view related content.