Drip irrigation provides a trade-off between yield and nutritional quality of tomato in the solar greenhouse

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2021.106777Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Nutrient yield (NY) and nutrient water productivity (NWP) were evaluated.

  • The NWP was improved under drip irrigation (DI) in both growth cycles.

  • The NY and water productivity were improved under DI in winter cycle.

  • DI reduces the pressure on the environment in horticultural production.

  • The role of environment generated by irrigation itself was discussed.

Abstract

To address the twin issues of food and nutrition security, the focus of agricultural production should be shifted from biomass productivity to nutritional gains. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the impact of conversion from furrow to drip irrigation on the yield components, water productivity (WP), nutritional yield (NY) and nutritional water productivity (NWP) of tomato during two consecutive growth cycles (2017–2018) in a greenhouse in the arid area of Northwest China. Results showed that the environment under drip irrigation was more beneficial to the accumulation of phytochemicals and the formation of total antioxidant activity in tomato fruits, which also significantly increased the NWP. However, the notable decline in single fruit fresh weight reducing the tomato yield significantly under drip irrigation in summer, while the WP and NY were similar to furrow irrigation. This indicated that the NY of tomato was mainly determined by the fruit yield, while the NWP was strongly affected by the mass concentration of nutrients. In contrast, no difference was found in the single fruit fresh weight and tomato yield between drip and furrow irrigation in winter, which related to the similar environmental conditions, while the WP and NY were significantly higher under drip irrigation. In summary, the potential and water use efficiency in nutrient production of tomato were enhanced under drip irrigation, and the improvement of fruit quality can offset the negative effect of yield reduction. Therefore, drip irrigation can achieve a good balance between the high yield and superior quality of tomato fruits, meanwhile reducing the pressure on the environment caused by horticultural production. We propose that the drip irrigation should be employed in the greenhouse in arid areas for tomato production, and the concepts of NY and NWP can be further applied to other horticultural crops with high nutritional value.

Introduction

“Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO, 1996). In the past decades, the Green Revolution 2.0″ greatly improved agricultural productivity and food availability, hence maintained global food security (Godecke et al., 2018, Pingali, 2012). However, more than half of the world population is currently still affected by undernutrition (Vinoth and Ravindhran, 2017), which may adversely influence physical and mental condition of children, decrease human immunity and increase risk of chronical diseases (Govender et al., 2016). The nutrition insecurity bringing a huge burden to global public health, socio-economic and human well-being, which is more serious than food insecurity (Martin et al., 2011).

Crops are the main source of essential nutrients for the growth and development of human beings, and improving crop quality is a sustainable and vital approach to address global nutrition insecurity (Vinoth and Ravindhran, 2017). However, the high accumulation of phytochemicals as well as crop biomass cannot be achieved simultaneously under any environmental scenarios (Bumgarner et al., 2012), thereby yield increases usually accompany degradation of quality (Graham et al., 2018). Therefore, there is a trade-off between the crop yield and quality. However, studies on agricultural water use, crop productivity, nutrition and human health conducted by agronomists or nutritionists were usually isolated (Nyathi et al., 2018). In order to cut the gordian knot of food and nutrition security, water-agriculture-nutrition-human health nexus should be emphasized and further studied.

Bumgarner et al., 2012, Renault and Wallender, 2000 were first to propose concepts of nutrient yield (NY) and nutrient water productivity (NWP), respectively. NY combines crop yield and nutrients mass concentration to calculate the amount of functional components produced per unit area, which can effectively compare the actual nutritional value of crops under different production systems (Graham et al., 2018). NWP refers to the amount of nutrients produced per unit amount of water (Blas et al., 2019), and reflects the efficiency of crops in converting available water resources into nutrient yield (Zhang et al., 2018). By using NY and NWP, the focus of agricultural production can be altered from increasing yield to improving quality, which is beneficial to ensure both global food and nutrition security. However, only a few studies are focused on NY or NWP, for example, for grain legumes (Chibarabada et al., 2017), wheat (Moreira-Ascarrunz et al., 2016), sweet potato (Nyathi et al., 2019a), twenty vegetables widely utilized in sub-Saharan Africa (Nyathi et al., 2019b) and a comparative study about Mediterranean diet in Spain (Blas et al., 2019).

Tomato is one of the important horticultural crops, which can provide nutritious and healthy food. Its high number of functional components, including carotenoids, vitamins, phenols, cellulose as well as mineral elements (Ripoll et al., 2016), and not at least its attractive flavor, make tomato one of the most popular vegetable crops, with the world-wide largest vegetable cropping area (Nangare et al., 2016). Due to its wide application in the human diet, minor changes in the concentration, yield or productivity of nutrients may have a substantial impact on the nutritional value of people. However, to the best of our knowledge, no experimental research have been reported that related NY and NWP under different agronomic or irrigation managements of greenhouse tomato.

The solar greenhouse industry is well developed in Northwest China, which is an arid zone and therefore facing serious problems of water shortage (Wang et al., 2011). Although drip irrigation is strongly promoted by the government to save water, furrow irrigation is currently still the common practice among local greenhouse growers. One of the reasons was that, yield reduction was reported under drip irrigation in the greenhouse. However, organoleptic quality, nutritional quality and antioxidant activity of tomato fruits generally improved compared with furrow irrigation according to the reportes of our research group previously. Therefore, the yield and water productivity of tomato in the greenhouse, as well as the NY and NWP of phytochemicals and total antioxidant activity are evaluated under drip and furrow irrigation in this research, to answer scientific questions including: (1) Can improvement of tomato fruit quality offset the negative effect of yield reduction under drip irrigation? (2) How does conversion of irrigation method impact human nutrition, farmland and water resource utilization in horticultural production?

Section snippets

General situation of the experimental site

The experiment was carried out in a non-heated solar greenhouse located in the Shiyanghe Experimental Station of China Agricultural University from April 20 to August 19, 2017 (summer cycle) and from November 1, 2017 to April 9, 2018 (winter cycle). The experimental station is located near Wuwei City, Gansu Province, China (E 102°50′50′, N 37°52′20′, a.s.l. 1580 m), which has a typical continental temperate climate. The solar greenhouse employed in our study is on an east-west orientation, 70 m

Variations in environmental factors in the greenhouse

The dynamic changes of soil moisture content in the planned wetted soil layer were notably different between drip and furrow irrigation (Fig. 2). From the beginning of water management to the end of the tomato growth period, the average soil moisture content under drip irrigation (DI1, DI2) was 0.2154 and 0.2254 cm3/cm3 during summer and winter cycle, respectively, which was 9.0% and 2.4% lower than those (0.2368 and 0.2308 cm3/cm3, respectively) under furrow irrigation (FI1, FI2).

Discussions

Drip irrigation method employs localized application of water in the plant root zone without irrigating the non-cropped area (Karlberg et al., 2007). Therefore, a smaller designed soil wetting proportion (p = 0.5) was used in drip irrigation, which account for the lower total irrigation amount, soil moisture content and ETc compared with furrow irrigation (Table 1). The lower ETc under drip irrigation was a direct result of the less water uptake (transportation) by plants, and implied the

Conclusions

In the summer experiment, the single fruit fresh weight and yield of tomato under drip irrigation were significantly lower than those in furrow irrigation, which accounted for no changes in WP. The non-beneficial irrigation during the tomato vegetative growth phase and the high VPD condition further limited the improvement in WP under drip irrigation. However, the tomato fruit quality was superior under drip irrigation, thereby can provide more adequate nutrition for human beings. Nevertheless,

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (51725904, 51790534, 51861125103), National Key Research Program (2016YFC0400207) and Discipline Innovative Engineering Plan (111 Program, B14002). Authors also thank New Mexico State University Agricultural Experiment Station as well as the editors and the reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.

References (89)

  • L. Karlberg et al.

    Low-cost drip irrigation-a suitable technology for southern Africa? An example with tomatoes using saline irrigation water

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (2007)
  • C. Kaur et al.

    Functional quality and antioxidant composition of selected tomato (Solanum lycopersicon L.) cultivars grown in Northern India

    Lwt-Food Sci. Technol.

    (2013)
  • P.S. Khapte et al.

    Deficit irrigation in tomato: agronomical and physio-biochemical implications

    Sci. Hortic.

    (2019)
  • S. Kumar et al.

    Effects of different mulches and irrigation methods on root growth, nutrient uptake, water-use efficiency and yield of strawberry

    Sci. Hortic.

    (2011)
  • H. Kuscu et al.

    The response of processing tomato to deficit irrigation at various phenological stages in a sub-humid environment

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (2014)
  • B. Li et al.

    Energy partitioning and microclimate of solar greenhouse under drip and furrow irrigation systems

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (2020)
  • Q. Li et al.

    Effects of soil moisture on water transport, photosynthetic carbon gain and water use efficiency in tomato are influenced by evaporative demand

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (2019)
  • J. Lu et al.

    Yield, fruit quality and water use efficiency of tomato for processing under regulated deficit irrigation: a meta-analysis

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (2019)
  • M. Motilva et al.

    Optimisation and validation of analytical methods for the simultaneous extraction of antioxidants: Application to the analysis of tomato sauces

    Food Chem.

    (2014)
  • D.D. Nangare et al.

    Growth, fruit yield and quality of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) as affected by deficit irrigation regulated on phenological basis

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (2016)
  • M. Ngouajio et al.

    Withholding of drip irrigation between transplanting and flowering increases the yield of field-grown tomato under plastic mulch

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (2007)
  • M.K. Nyathi et al.

    Nutritional water productivity of selected leafy vegetables

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (2018)
  • M.K. Nyathi et al.

    The dual-purpose use of orange-fleshed sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas var. Bophelo) for improved nutritional food security

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (2019)
  • M.K. Nyathi et al.

    Benchmarking nutritional water productivity of twenty vegetables-a review

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (2019)
  • J.K. Parsons et al.

    The Men’s Eating and Living (MEAL) study: a cancer and leukemia group B pilot trial of dietary intervention for the treatment of prostate cancer

    Urology

    (2008)
  • R. Qiu et al.

    Response of evapotranspiration and yield to planting density of solar greenhouse grown tomato in northwest China

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (2013)
  • A.V. Rao et al.

    Carotenoids and human health

    Pharmacol. Res.

    (2007)
  • A.V. Rao et al.

    Effect of low dose lycopene intake on lycopene bioavailability and oxidative stress

    Nutr. Res.

    (2002)
  • R. Re et al.

    Antioxidant activity applying an improved ABTS radical cation decolorization assay

    Free Radical Bio. Med.

    (1999)
  • H. Ren et al.

    Forage nutritional characteristics and yield dynamics in a grazed semiarid steppe ecosystem of Inner Mongolia, China

    Ecol. Indic.

    (2016)
  • D. Renault et al.

    Nutritional water productivity and diets

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (2000)
  • J. Ripoll et al.

    Water deficit effects on tomato quality depend on fruit developmental stage and genotype

    J. Plant Physiol.

    (2016)
  • Y. Ruan et al.

    Molecular regulation of seed and fruit set

    Trends Plant Sci.

    (2012)
  • S. Sato et al.

    Formation of parthenocarpic fruit, undeveloped flowers and aborted flowers in tomato under moderately elevated temperatures

    Sci. Hortic.

    (2001)
  • F. Saura-Calixto et al.

    Antioxidant capacity of the Spanish Mediterranean diet

    Food Chem.

    (2006)
  • V.L. Singleton et al.

    Analysis of total phenols and other oxidation substrates and antioxidants by means of folin-ciocalteu reagent

    Method Enzymol.

    (1999)
  • Q. Sun et al.

    Water use efficiency was improved at leaf and yield levels of tomato plants by continuous irrigation using semipermeable membrane

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (2018)
  • K.N. Tiwari et al.

    Response of okra (Abelmoschus esculentus (L.) Moench.) to drip irrigation under mulch and non-mulch conditions

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (1998)
  • N.P. Uusiku et al.

    Nutritional value of leafy vegetables of sub-Saharan Africa and their potential contribution to human health: a review

    J. Food Compos. Anal.

    (2010)
  • C. Wang et al.

    Assessing the response of yield and comprehensive fruit quality of tomato grown in greenhouse to deficit irrigation and nitrogen application strategies

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (2015)
  • F. Wang et al.

    Determination of comprehensive quality index for tomato and its response to different irrigation treatments

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (2011)
  • Z. Wei et al.

    Carbon isotope discrimination shows a higher water use efficiency under alternate partial root-zone irrigation of field-grown tomato

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (2016)
  • H. Yang et al.

    Interactive regimes of reduced irrigation and salt stress depressed tomato water use efficiency at leaf and plant scales by affecting leaf physiology and stem sap flow

    Front. Plant Sci.

    (2019)
  • K. Yang et al.

    Potato performance as influenced by the proportion of wetted soil volume and nitrogen under drip irrigation with plastic mulch

    Agric. Water Manag.

    (2017)
  • Cited by (24)

    • Controlled mechanical stimuli reveal novel associations between basil metabolism and sensory quality

      2023, Food Chemistry
      Citation Excerpt :

      Exploring the resilience of crops to sub-optimal growing conditions causing plant stress is a well-established research field (Dusenge, Duarte, & Way, 2019; Zandalinas, Balfagón, Gómez-Cadenas, & Mittler, 2022). Although most of the studies focus on the negative effects of stress conditions on crop yield and plant metabolism, research has also focused on exploring the potentially beneficial effects of applying controlled stress conditions on crop quality, particularly changing temperature (Baier, Bittner, Prescher, & van Buer, 2019), light (Mariz-Ponte et al., 2019) and irrigation (Li, Wim, Shukla, & Du, 2021). However, less attention has been given to mechanical stimuli caused by e.g., wind, rain, neighboring plants, or predatory animal, which can induce a range of adaptive responses influencing crop yield and quality (Börnke & Rocksch, 2018).

    • An improved model to simulate soil water and heat: A case study for drip-irrigated tomato grown in a greenhouse

      2023, Agricultural Water Management
      Citation Excerpt :

      As an efficient water-saving irrigation technology, drip irrigation is already mainstream in greenhouse water supplemental systems. Drip irrigation system can deliver water and fertilizer to crop root zone in a timely and appropriate amount according to water demand of crops, therefore providing trade-off between crop yield and quality (Li et al., 2021). For greenhouse grown crops, soil physical, chemical, and biological processes are influence by soil water and temperature conditions, which depend greatly on crop root systems in different soil layers (Li et al., 2015).

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text