Humic Substances Improve Vegetable Seedling Quality and Post-Transplant Yield Performance under Stress Conditions
Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center, Texas A&M University, Uvalde, TX 78801, USA
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Agriculture 2020, 10(7), 254; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture10070254
Received: 4 June 2020 / Revised: 24 June 2020 / Accepted: 29 June 2020 / Published: 1 July 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modern Seed Technology)
Vegetable growers require vigorous transplants in order to reduce the period of transplant shock during early stand establishment. Organic media containing solid humic substances (HS) are amendments that have not been comprehensively explored for applications in containerized vegetable transplant production systems. In this study, HS (1% v/v) were applied to a peat-based growth medium to evaluate pre- and post-transplant growth modulation of four economically important vegetable species. Those were: pepper, tomato, watermelon, and lettuce. Seeding for all species was performed in two periods in order to evaluate their post-transplant yield performance under drought (water deficit vs. well-watered) and heat (hot vs. cool season) stresses. Compared with control, HS-treated plants had: (1) increased leaf and root biomass after transplanting due to faster growth rates; (2) lower root/shoot ratio before transplanting, but higher after 10 days of field establishment; and (3) increased root length and surface area. The negative effects of heat and drought stresses on crop yield were more prominent in control plants, while HS-treated transplants were able to mitigate yield decreases. The results clearly demonstrated the benefits of using solid HS as a management input to improve transplant quality in these crop species.
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Keywords:
containerized transplants; humic acids; relative growth rate (RGR); specific root length (SRL); heat and drought stresses; heatmaps
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MDPI and ACS Style
Qin, K.; Leskovar, D.I. Humic Substances Improve Vegetable Seedling Quality and Post-Transplant Yield Performance under Stress Conditions. Agriculture 2020, 10, 254. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture10070254
AMA Style
Qin K, Leskovar DI. Humic Substances Improve Vegetable Seedling Quality and Post-Transplant Yield Performance under Stress Conditions. Agriculture. 2020; 10(7):254. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture10070254
Chicago/Turabian StyleQin, Kuan, and Daniel I. Leskovar 2020. "Humic Substances Improve Vegetable Seedling Quality and Post-Transplant Yield Performance under Stress Conditions" Agriculture 10, no. 7: 254. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture10070254
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