Fertirrigation and transplant production

In the northern zone of the processing tomato crop, transplanting is an essential phase to accelerate crop establishment which leads to staggered harvesting. It is therefore necessary to obtain hardened transplants to ensure good crop recovery where climatic conditions are sometimes a severely limiting factor. Among the crop practices which influence transplant characteristics, research has focused on the volume of the transplant plug tray, on the type of substrate, and on fertilisation. However, thorough research has not been conducted on the equilibrium between watts and mineral elements as they affect seedling growth and characteristics. During an experiment, we studied the influence of 6 water and mineral element ratios with different concentrations. The nutrient solutions which have low concentrations of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium give transplants with low growth (1.05 to 1.28 g fresh matter/plant), and high dry matter content in the shoot (14.04 to 14.14%). On the other hand, the nutrient solutions with the highest mineral concentration give transplants with high accumulation of water (2.97 to 3.85 g water/plant) and high mineral elements in the shoots, however dry matter content was very low (7.61 to 8.77%). The transplants with high dry matter content were more resistant, which ensures better recovery in the open field, particularly when installation in the field is deferred.