Efeito de diferentes substratos na produção de mudas de alface

Abstract

Lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) is one of the most popular and consumed vegetables in Brazil and worldwide; the production of seedlings is one of the most important stages, since it interferes with the development of plants; to produce quality seedlings, a suitable substrate must be chosen, which presents appropriate chemical, physical and biological characteristics. Due to the great diversity of substrates available on the market, and the emergence of new products, it is necessary to carry out research in order to verify the effect of these inputs on the production of several species of cultivated plants. Thus, the objective was to evaluate the performance of different substrates in the production of lettuce seedlings. The experiment was conducted in an agricultural greenhouse at UFFS campus Chapecó in 2022; a randomized complete block (DBC) design was used, with 3 treatments and 7 replications. The treatments consisted of 3 substrates: Garden Plus®, MecPlant® and Agrocerro®. Sowing was carried out with lettuce seeds of the Hanson cultivar, in multicellular trays of 128 cells. The following were evaluated: plant emergence at 7, 14, 21, 28, and 35 days after sowing (DAS); at 14, 21, 28 and 35 DAS, the number of leaves and plant height were evaluated; at 35 DAS, root length, root and shoot dry mass of plants were evaluated. The results were submitted to analysis of variance and the means were compared by the Tukey test (p<0.05) using the SISVAR® software. The tested substrates influenced the quality of lettuce seedlings cultivar Hanson. Plant emergence, number of leaves and shoot dry mass of lettuce plants were higher in MecPlant® and Garden Plus® substrates, compared to AgroCerro®. The MecPlant® substrate, from 21 DAS, provided the development of seedlings with greater plant height. For plant root length, Mecplant® substrate was superior to Agrocerro® and root dry mass was higher with the use of Mecplant® substrate in seedling production. It is possible to conclude that, under the conditions in which this research was carried out, the substrates MecPlant® and Garden Plus® produced more vigorous seedlings of lettuce cultivar Hanson.