Growth of forage palm cultivars irrigated with saline waters

Abstract

Forage palm is considered an important resource in the Brazilian semiarid region. Thus, this study aimed at analyzing different levels of salinity in irrigation water on the growth of three forage palm cultivars. The study was carried out in the Federal University of Campina Grande (7°12’52.56”S; 35°54’22.26”O) in 120 L pots open to the sky. The experiment was a complete randomized block, with 4 replications and a 4x3 factorial arrangement. The treatments consisted of 4 levels of salinity in irrigation water with electrical conductivity of 0.2; 2.0; 3.8 and 5.6 dS m -1; and three forage palm cultivars: Miúda or Doce (Nopalea cochenillifera Salm Dyck), Orelha de Elefante (Opuntia stricta), Baiana or IPA Sertânia (Nopalea cochenillifera Salm Dyck). At 150 days after treatments, it was evaluated: length, width and perimeter of primary and secondary cladodes and total number of cladodes. The variables were submitted to the variance analysis using F-test (p < 0.05) and when some significant effect was found the quadratic regression analysis was applied for the quantitative variable and the Turkey test (p < 0.05) was used for the qualitative variable. Salinity levels in irrigation water did not affect the growth variables. There was a significant difference on the growth of forage palm as a function of its cultivar. The Baiana cultivar showed the highest vegetative growth of length and perimeter of primary and secondary cladode, while Miúda and Orelha de Elefante presented the greatest cladode numbers for plant and cladode width, respectively.

Keywords

• Electrical conductivity of irrigation water
• Nopalea
• Opuntia.