Phosphorus (P) improves industrial tomato quality and yield in soil with high phosphorus content

Abstract

Soils under intensive and successive cropping with central pivot irrigation tend to present high nutrient contents, especially phosphorus (P), which is a nutrient with a great impact on the yield and quality of agricultural products. Among the rotating crops, the application of high P rates is common in processing tomato, although not supported by research. This work evaluates the effect of phosphate fertilization (0, 200, 400, 600, 800, and 1000 kg ha-1 P2O5) on the yield and quality of industrial tomato 'Heinz 9553' grown in a soil with high available P content (145 mg dm-3) resulting of an intensive vegetables cultivation, which have high demand by P. The highest total (127.4 t ha-1) and commercial (108.6 t ha-1) yields were obtained with 413.9 and 384 kg ha-1 P2O5, respectively. The results showed that pH of tomato juice, the percentages of green, red, and commercial fruits were not influenced by the applied P rates. However, nutrient delivery increased the soluble solids content up to 356 kg ha-1 P2O5, which is interesting for tomato processing. After harvesting the fruits, the available soil P content was increased with P supply to the plants. For improvement of commercial yield and soluble solids characteristics, the tomato crop shall be fertilised with P even though the soil has high P content.