Evaluation of Two Sources of Organic Matter Applied to Soil and Their Effects on Grape Production

There are about 8000 ha planted with grapes in Caborca, Sonora, 44% of that are for raisin grapes and the remaining for table grapes. This region has soil with very low organic matter, and that retains little moisture. Together with the intensive use for many years, the soil has little fertility or available nutrients to meet the needs of this crop. Also, the high cost of fertilizers combined with innocuity norms that are being implemented, has forced the search for ecological and economic alternatives for crop nutrition. Compost use can be a suitable alternative to recover soil fertility and productivity of grapes. The objective was to evaluate the effect of two organic matter sources, in the grape production and quality. In two different commercial vineyards—one with Superior Seedless for table grape and one with Flame Seedless for raisin grapes—we evaluated the commercial HUMIBAC compost and bovine manure in doses of 12.5 t·ha^-1 and compared with the control treatment (without organic matter application). There were no significant differences in the total production of table grapes (8.43 t·ha^-1 in the control and 13.69 t·ha^-1 with HUMIBAC); it was on the percentage of clusters with commercial quality, and was higher with HUMIBAC (70.5 %), and also, both HUMIBAC and control were highly significantly different in sugar content with 20.4 and 19.7 °Brix. On raisin grapes, as far as the yield, the compost affected statistically positively both the table grape and raisin grape, whereas the control yield was 6.9 t/ha and 1.5 t·ha^-1 (table grape and raisin grape, respectively); the compost (Bovine manure and HUMIBAC) yield was from 13.2 t·ha^-1 to 20.8 t·ha^-1 (table grape) and 2.55 t·ha^-1 to 4.65 t·ha^-1 (raisin grape).