TITLE:
The Effect of Different Irrigation Levels in Cowpea Production in the Mid-Northern Region of Tocantins—Brazil
AUTHORS:
Francisco Maurício Alves Francelino, Fábio Cunha Coelho, Carmen Maria Coimbra Manhães, Danilo Gomes de Oliveira, Levi Rodrigues Neto, Mírian Peixoto Soares da Silva
KEYWORDS:
Vigna unguiculata (L.), Productivity, Water Efficiency
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Climate Change,
Vol.7 No.4,
October
29,
2018
ABSTRACT: The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of the application of irrigation levels in the productivity and water use efficiency, in the soil and climatic conditions of the municipality of Colinas do Tocantins, located in the Mid-Northern region of the State of Tocantins. The cowpea cultivation system was submitted to the application of five irrigation blades, based on ET0—Reference Evapotranspiration: Blade 0% of ET0, Blade 50% of ET0, Blade 75% of ET0, Blade 100% of ET0 and Blade 125% of ET0 (B0, B50, B75, B100 and B125% of ET0). The descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data, applying the 95% confidence interval to discriminate the differences between the treatments, since the replicates were constituted of 100 plants harvested at random within the plot for each treatment and no design method was performed. A significant effect of the different levels was found on all evaluated components, with the exception of the length of the pod, which did not differ in the irrigation levels. The increase in irrigation contributed to the increase of the results of the components that compete directly for higher productivity, such as number of pods per plant, weight of pods and number of seeds per pod. In these results, it was found that higher irrigation levels confer higher yields. Water-use efficiency—WUE behaved as per productivity trend, that is, it decreased with the reduction of irrigation levels.