Growth and Physiology of Cherry Tomatoes Under Organic Fertilization in Different Environments

The cherry tomato is a vegetable that is gaining great prominence commercially and, for this reason, are being developed alternatives that aim to its production of more sustainable way. Among these alternatives are the use of organic fertilizers and barriers alive. The objective of this study was to evaluate the growth and gas exchange of cherry tomato plants (Solanum lycopersicum var. Cerasiforme) cultivated under different organic fertilizations in an environment with and without alive barrier. The experimental design was randomized blocks with split-plot to the variables leaf area, leaves dry mass and stem dry mass, relative index of chlorophyll, photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance, transpiration and water use efficiency, being the plots defined by two environments (with or without barrier) and the subplots formed by the sources of organic fertilizer (chicken manure, bovine manure and without fertilization), with five repetitions. As for the variables plant height, stem diameter, used a split-split plot design with sub-subplots formed by the seven evaluation epochs (7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42 and 49 days after transplanting). When cultivated in alive barrier environment and under fertilization with chicken manure, cherry tomato plants presented higher growth in height and stem diameter, with no difference between the leaf and stem dry masses. In contrast, the without alive barrier environment provided an increase in chlorophyll content and increases of 55.38%, 34.49% and 46.81% in stomatal conductance, photosynthesis and transpiration, respectively. For WUE, the environment with alive barrier was higher in 18.71%.