Comparison of capillary wick and trickle irrigation systems by assessing the effects of fertigation in various soil textures on growth traits of greenhouse cucumber plant

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate the capillary wick irrigation (CWI) influence on the cucumber's growth characteristics when compared to trickle irrigation over the two growing seasons. The study incorporated three different soil textures, namely clay loam (CL) – S1, sandy clay loam (SCL) – S2, and sandy loam (SL) – S3, along with four fertilizer levels (F1, F2, F3, and F4) applied at 0.7, 0.85, 1.0, and 1.15 times the plant's nutrient requirements. According to the study findings, the combination of F4 fertilizer with trickle irrigation yielded the best results in terms of reproductive traits, resulting in an average of 18.66 fruits and a total fruit weight of 1,229.5 g. In the case of CWI, the highest number of fruits and their combined weight were observed at the F3 fertilizer level, with 13.42 fruits and 846.3 g, respectively. The study also revealed that TI with soil texture S1 produced the highest average yield for all growth traits, while CWI with the lighter soil texture S3 exhibited superior results in vegetative and reproductive growth traits. The maximum fruit weight (1,460.26 g) was achieved using trickle irrigation and S1F4, and the highest fruit weight (995.57 g) was obtained from S3F3 when using CWI.