Effect of controlling the leaching fraction on the fertigation and production of a tomato crop under soilless culture》.pdfVIP

Scientia Horticulturae 179 (2014) 153–157 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Scientia Horticulturae j o u rn al h o m e p ag e: w w w. elsev /locate/scih orti Effect of controlling the leaching fraction on the fertigation and production of a tomato crop under soilless culture Daniel Rodríguez a , Juan Reca b , Juan Martínez b , María Teresa Lao c , Miguel Urrestarazu c,∗ a Roque Technological Institute, 38110 Celaya, Guanajuato, Mexico b Department of Engineering, University of Almería, 04120 Almería, Spain c Department of Agronomy, University of Almería, 04120 Almería, Spain a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: In recent decades, the improvement of automated fertigation systems has gained great importance for the Received 2 August 2014 efficient use of water and fertilizers and for environmental sustainability. The objective of this study was Received in revised form to evaluate the performance of a new fertigation system compared to the fertigation-control tray system, 13 September 2014 which has been widely used in soilless cultures. A tomato crop (cv. Ramyle) was cultivated in coir crop Accepted 15 September 2014 units at the University of Almeria from November 2012 to May 2013. The fertigation-control tray method Available online 30 September 2014 was used as a control (T0) and was compared to a new proportional integral derivative (PID) controlled