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Abstract
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The commercial growing media in the world are mainly cocopit, peat moss, and perlite, which, due to their high costs, are not economical for transplanting. Since most of the date wastes are usually not usable, processing of these wastes can be a good option for replacing of substrate in hydroponic culture for some important transplants such as tomato and eggplant. For this purpose, a factorial experiment with a completely randomized design ,including effects of thermal factors with 1, 2 and 3 hours warm water exposure and 1%, 3% and 5% of sulfuric acid application on decayed and semi-decayed Date peat medium for tomato (GS-15) seedlings and eggplant (black beauty) vegetation, with three replications, were carried out in the research greenhouse of the Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources of the Persian Gulf University, Bushehr, 2017-2018. Morphological and biochemical traits such as plant height, leaf number, leaf area, crown diameter, root length, root volume, fresh and dry root weight, fresh and dry shoot weight, chlorophyll index, total nitrogen, potassium, calcium, phosphorus and magnesium contents of grown tomato and eggplant transplants, were evaluated. The results showed that the decayed Date peat substrate had the most effect on all morphological and biochemical traits in tomato and eggplant transplants. In Date peat substrate with 3 hour of exposure with warm water, leaf number, root length, fresh and dry weight of shoot, root fresh weight and calcium content were significantly increased in tomato transplants. Whereas, the magnesium and potassium contents of tomato transplants were significantly decreased by warm water for 3 hour in decayed Date peat compared to other levels of treatment and control groups. Application of different treatments in semi-decayed Date peat showed decrease in leaf number ( 2.09), leaf area 13.13 cm2, root volume (0.19cm3), shoot fresh weight (1.79g) and root fresh weight (1.02g), root dry weight (0.11g), shoot dry weight (
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