Cultivo de cana-de-açúcar sob lâminas de irrigação por gotejamento pulsado e contínuo

Abstract

Sugarcane is a highly expressive crop in the world agricultural market due to its contribution to the food and sugar-energy industry. With the expansion of the sugar-alcohol sector and periods of climatic instability, the need for new technologies and tools, such as irrigation, arises, which guarantees the security of production with gains in quantity and quality in the sugarcane fields. In this sense, the pulse irrigation technique aims to support irrigation management with the potential to maximize the use of water and nutrients, and thus contribute to the rationalization of inputs and the sustainability of cropping systems. For this, an experiment was conducted under field conditions at the Experimental Sugar Cane Station of Carpina (EECAC/UFRPE) located in the city of Carpina – PE. The experimental design was a randomized block design with 10 treatments distributed in a 2 x 5 factorial scheme, the first factor being the type of irrigation application (pulse irrigation and continuous irrigation) and the second factor five replacement depths of crop evapotranspiration. (40, 60, 80, 100, and 120% of ETc), with four repetitions. For the pulse irrigation application condition, four irrigation pulses were defined with a 40-minute rest interval between two irrigations. The increase in water deficit reduced the extraction and export of nutrients, gas exchange, growth, and productive yield of sugarcane. Pulsed irrigation mitigated the negative effects of water deficit, and provided an increase in the nutritional, physiological, growth, and productive aspects of the crop.