Eid T. A. and M. F. El-Kholy( 2018). Effect of Some Mulching Treatments on Water Use Efficiency, Growth, Yield and Fruit Quality of Williams Banana PlantMiddle East Journal of Agriculture Research ISSN 2077-4605
Volume : 07 | Issue : 01 | Jan.-Mar. | 2018 Pages:117-131
Abstract: The present work was conducted at El-Kanater Horticultural Research Station during 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 growing seasons to study the effect of different irrigation regimes (irrigation at either 30 or 60 % of available soil moisture depletion) and mulching treatments; (black polyethylene plastic, rice straw; banana leaves and no mulching) on water use efficiency, vegetative growth measurements, bunch weight, yield and fruit quality of first and second ratoons of Williams banana plant. Economic studies were also done. The design of the experiment was complete randomized block design eight interaction treatments with three replicates for each treatment.
The most important results can be summarized as follows: Water consumption use (WCU) was increased in the case of frequent irrigation at 30 % of available soil moisture depletion (I1) value which was found to be 1055 and 1032 (mm) in both growing seasons, respectively. Regarding mulching treatments, the values of the water consumption use were increased under both no mulching and rice straw mulching compared with either black plastic or banana leaves mulching. Also, average water use efficiency (WUE) increased by plastic mulch and recorded (6.38 kg/m3), followed by banana leaves mulch (5.70kg/m3), and rice straw (4.14 kg/m3) in both seasons.
Plastic sheet, banana leaves and rice straw mulching generally led to increase (WUE) by 118%, 95.2% and 41.8% over the un-mulched treatment, respectively in both seasons. Data showed that the 30 % of available water irrigation (I1) gave the best vegetative growth, fruit yield and fruit quality under this study, while decreased duration from bunch shooting to harvest as compared with 60 % (I2) treatment. Furthermore, the highest significant values of growth and yield were obtained when used polyethylene or banana leaves mulching, followed by straw rice compared
with unmulching treatment. Data also showed that, irrigation at 30 % of available soil moisture depletion (I1) with covering black polyethylene and/or banana leaves mulch gave the least values of water consumptive use which were 1055 and 1032 (mm) in both seasons. And increase was attained also in pseudostem height (cm.), pseudostem circumference (cm) and number of leaves/plant. Moreover, covering with black polyethylene or banana leaves mulch resulted in significantly increase in fruiting parameters (bunch weight and yield kg/plant). In addition, most of finger characteristics were improved by using 30 % of available soil moisture depletion (I1) than the irrigation at 60 % of available soil moisture depletion (I2) during both 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 seasons, respectively. In brief, it could be recommended to irrigate Williams banana plant grown on clay loam soil at 30 % of available soil moisture depletion (I1) for saving irrigation water with best, vegetative growth,
fruit yield and fruit quality under condition of this study. Mulching banana plants with black polyethylene would lower costs and increases the environment benefits compared to rice straw mulch.
Keywords: (Banana, irrigation regimes, mulching, vegetative growth, yield , fruit quality.)
