Abstract
Nowadays, salinity stress is the most important abiotic stress for plants, because in addition to reducing yield, it reduces the amount of fresh water and land that can be used for agriculture. By contrast, in soilless or hydroponic cultivation systems, plants are cultivated in an environment other than soil, in order to get to maximum plant density, improve yield and reduce soil contamination and nutrient uptake problems. Considering that tomato is a plant with high nutritional value and that it can be grown in different substrates, choosing a suitable substrate for cultivation that has the ability to reduce the effects of salinity is important. In order to study the effect of activated carbon and potassium-enriched nano zeolite as an adsorbent under salty conditions on yield, growth, physiological properties and water use efficiency of tomato.
This experiment was performed as a factorial experiment in a completely randomized design with three replications in the Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources of the Persian Gulf in 2022 in greenhouse conditions with a temperature of 22 ± 5°C and a relative humidity of 50 to 70%. The experiment consisted of two factors of cultivation bed and irrigation water salinity. Five types of culture media including basic culture media (cocopeat and perlite at 2/1v/v) and the treatments of activated carbon and nanozeolite enriched with potassium at two levels of 15 and 30g of each adsorbent, which were added to the kg of basic culture medium. Salinity levels of water applied at three levels of 1.8, 3.5 and 5.5 dS/m of Hoagland solution. Salinity treatments were applied two weeks after the establishment of Adamino tomato seedlings in the culture bed, through the drip solution system, and continued until one week before the end of the experiment (120 days). The measured traits were total yield, average fruit weight, chlorophyll a, b and total, carotenoids, lycopene, vitamin C, TSS, TA of fruit extract, electrolyte leakage, relativ