DICKSON QUALITY INDEX AND MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTIC OF CUCUMBER SEEDLINGS, PRODUCED ON DIFFERENT ALTERNATIVE SUBSTRATES

Abstract

Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) is a fruit vegetable of indeterminate habit and annual, being very appreciated in all Brazilian regions. The great versatility offered by this culture allows its exploitation in different edaphoclimatic conditions and technological levels, guaranteeing its economic and social importance within the agribusiness of vegetables in Brazil. The objective of the study was to evaluate the quality of Dickson and the morphological characteristics of cucumber seedlings, produced in different substrates obtained using local resources in the Paragominas-Pará region. The experiment was conducted at the Federal Rural University of Amazônia, campus of Paragominas, in the experimental area of Horticulture, during the period from February to March of 2016, the statistical design was completely randomized, with four treatments and five replications. The treatments were four substrates: soybean residue; rice straw; commercial substrate, and blend. The following characteristics were evaluated: height, fresh mass, dry mass, fresh root mass, root dry mass, diameter, number of leaves and Dickson Quality Score. All data were analyzed statistically through the SISVAR program, with F test at the 5% probability level and the means compared by the Tukey test. By means of the results for the four proposed treatments used to produce cucumber seedlings, it was possible to verify that the substrate mixture favored the growth of the seedlings in comparison to the other treatments, also standing out for the results obtained for Dickson Quality Index. KEYWORDS: Growth, Rice straw, Soybean residue, Vegetables.