The effect of wick and drip irrigation methods on yield and some growth traits of greenhouse cucumber in different soil textures

Abstract
Background and objectives: The cucumber is one of the semi-tropic vegetables of economic importance that is widely cultivated worldwide. To optimally grow this plant in the greenhouse environment, the requirements for cucumber moisture should be fulfilled. Due to the high efficiency of the irrigation method, two methods of capillary wick irrigation and drip irrigation, among the different irrigation methods, are of interest for this purpose. Thus, the current research was undertaken to determine the effectiveness of the wick irrigation method compared to the drip irrigation method on the yield and some growth characteristics of greenhouse cucumber plants in three different soil textures under the conditions of pot cultivation in the greenhouse environment.

Materials and methods: This study was conducted for two cultivation periods as a factorial, based on a complete randomized design with three replications in different soil textures including clay-loam (CL) marked with (S1), sandy-clay-loam (SCL) marked with (S2), and sandy-loam (SL) marked with (S3) on greenhouse cucumber Nagene cultivar with two methods of capillary wicking and drip irrigation as well as same nutrition program. The greenhouse used in this project was in the form of a tunnel with a plastic coating, with a height of 3 meters, and an opening width of 4.4 meters. The cultivation of the cucumber plant was carried out in the first half of March and the second half of August of the following year using a pot method with a soil culture bed. Several investigated characteristics, including plant height, stem dry weight, number of leaves, fruit weight, fruit number, main root length, number of root branches, root dry weight, and plant fresh weight were subjected to statistical analysis after sampling as well as measuring in SAS and Excel environment.

Results: The results revealed that the effect of irrigation method, soil texture, and their interactions on vegetative traits of cucumber, the effect of irrigation method on vegetative and reproductive traits, and the impact of soil texture on root organs were different at 0.01 level of significance. In the vegetative part, the stem height, stem dry weight, total leaves, total plant weight; and in the reproductive part, the number of fruits and total fruit weight; and in the root section, the root length, number of root branches, and dry root weight in soil texture CL were affected by drip irrigation method. In wick irrigation, the reproductive traits and root organs in SL soil texture outperformed others. The effect of wick irrigation on fruit production and plant biomass was observed to increase in three soil textures of CL, SCL, and SL with values of 760.98, 782.58, and 995.56 grams, respectively; in drip irrigation, it was observed to increase with values of 1315.81, 1131.71, and 736.22 grams respectively. In all three soil textures, the effect of wick irrigation on root organ traits was almost the same, while the influence of drip irrigation on root traits in CL, SCL, and SL textures diminished, respectively.

Conclusion: The results indicated that in the reproductive part and root organ, the wick method was not preferable to the drip method, while the opposite trend was observed in the vegetative part. Although the wick irrigation method was not superior to drip irrigation in the production of cucumber, being successful in its application due to the simple management of the system by eliminating pumping and advanced irrigation equipment, its self-irrigation and its superiority in the production of vegetative traits can be successful in plants with economic value in the vegetative sector.