Biostimulant action on quality of tomato seedlings produced in different types of trays

Abstract

The use of tomato seedlings grown in trays provides an improvement in the productive system of tomato cultivation, however, there are still doubts regarding the volume of cells trays, mainly with the cost:benefit of seedlings produced in trays with small cells. On the other hand, the use of biostimulants may be an alternative that meets the lack of space for the initial development of the roots and thus can reduce production efficiency. Accordingly, we studied the use of trays with cells of different volumes and application of different concentrations of Stimulate® in the quality of tomato seedlings. The experimental design was completely randomized factorial 3×5, with three trays - 162 (31 cm3), 288 (15 cm3) and 450 (11 cm3) cells and concentrations of Stimulate® -0.0, 0.10, 0.15, 0.20 and 0.25% and four replicates; for this experiment, the cultivar 'Katia' was used. The characteristics evaluated were: number of leaves, shoot length, length of roots, stem diameter, dry mass of shoot and root dry matter. The data were subjected to analysis of variance and when significant were submitted to Tukey test at 5% probability when the tray was a significant factor and subjected to regression analysis when the concentration factor showed significance. There was an interaction between the factors for the number of leaves, stem diameter, dry mass of shoot and root dry matter. The shoot length was influenced only by biostimulant and root length only suffered influence by the type of tray. According to the results observed, the application of a plant growth regulator at higher concentrations gave an increase in quality of the seedling tray with smaller volumes of cells, and plants produced with larger cells showed no need for application.