Organic Mulchings and Their Effects on Development, Fruit Yield and Quality in Watermelon

The acreage of watermelon in Mexico has increased, mostly for exportation during the last years. The use of plastic mulching is a strategy to increase the yield crop. However, the plastic mulching wastes cause contamination. In order to reduce this problematic situation, an alternative is the use of plant wastes to produce organic mulching. Organic mulching has a faster degradation and easy incorporation to soil. The objective was to evaluate the effect of plant wastes used as organic mulching on the development, yield and quality of fresh watermelon. The organic mulching were made from sugarcane foliage, banana leaves, rice straw, coconut leaves, coconut fiber, and Tanzania grass. The treatments were distributed in a Complete Randomized Blocks design, and data were processed for ANOVA, and means separated by Tukey test (p≤0.05). Significant differences between treatments were obtained for the variables: length shoot, equatorial diameter, fruit weight, yield per plant, and fruit yield per hectare. The longest length shoot was obtained with the Tanzania mulching with 5.02 m; however, the sugarcane foliage produced the highest values in polar perimeter with 71.2 cm, 7.0 Kg fruit weight, 35 Kg of fruit yield per plant and highest fruit yield per hectare with 100.1 Ton/ha. Non significant differences were obtained for days to blooming, number of fruits per plant, polar perimeter, and °Brix. Our results sustain that the organic mulching made with sugarcane foliage produced the best plant performance and fresh fruit production in watermelon. Organic mulching is a friendly strategy for the watermelon production.

KEY WORDS. Citrullus lanatus, soil contamination, organic wastes, mulching.