YIELD OF SINGLE-HEAD BROCCOLI UNDER DIFFERENT IRRIGATION SYSTEMS

Irrigation in sustainable agriculture should provide high marketable crop yields with minimum water consumption. The aim of this study was to evaluate the yield of single-head broccoli cultivation under different irrigation systems. A completely randomized design experiment with five blocks was performed to test the irrigation systems: surface drip irrigation, subsurface drip irrigation, micro-sprinkler, Santeno (R) and sprinkler irrigation. We evaluated the Lord Summer hybrid of single-head broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. italic) and the variables assessed were diameter of inflorescence (DI), yield of marketable inflorescence (PCI) and water productivity (PA). The uniformity coefficients of Christiansen (CUC) and water distribution (CUD) were used to evaluate the performance of the irrigation systems. The results showed a direct and proportional relationship between system performance and the improvement of the variables DI, PCI and PA. Subsurface drip irrigation promoted the highest yields when compared to the others. Surprisingly, the lowest irrigation depth applied within crop cycle (236.8 mm) reached the highest values of DI (19.5 +/- 0.42 cm), PCI (12.3 +/- 0.56 t ha(-1)) and PA (5.2 +/- 0.20 kg m(-3)).