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Lettuce ( Lactuca sativa ) crop production using drip irrigation installed at

different depths

Article  in  Acta Horticulturae · September 2019

DOI: 10.17660/ActaHortic.2019.1253.25

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Lettuce (Lactuca sativa) crop production using drip
irrigation installed at different depths
J.V. Prado-Herná ndez1,2,a, J. Pineda-Pineda1, A. Martı́nez-Ruı́z2, M. Carrillo-Garcı́a2,3 and
J.J. Aparicio-Parra4
1Soils Dept., University of Chapingo, Chapingo, Texcoco, Mexico; 2Agricultural Engineering Graduate Program,

University of Chapingo, Chapingo, Texcoco, Mexico; 3Irrigation Dept., University of Chapingo, Chapingo, Texcoco,
Mexico; 4Bajo Rı́o Bravo Irrigation District 025, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

Abstract
The objective of this study was to evaluate the yield, width and length of a leaf
from a lettuce crop irrigated by a drip irrigation system, with irrigation tape installed
superficially and at the subsurface at different depths: 10, 15 and 20 cm. The
experiment was realized in a greenhouse and the texture of the soil used for the
planting was sandy clay loam, in plastic containers. At different growth stages the soil
water content, values of pH, EC and nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K)
concentrations were assessed within wetting bulb. Sampling was done in a mesh made
in a vertical soil profile perpendicular to the drip tape at the center of the container in
order to assess distribution patterns. The nutrient solution and the irrigation
conditions for the four depths of irrigation drips were the same. Plant yield was
significantly higher (α=0.05) in the subsurface irrigation compared to the surface
irrigation. No differences between installation depth of the subsurface irrigation were
observed. There were no statistically significant differences between treatments in the
uniformity of soil water content in the wetting bulb; differences were observed in the
distribution of K, N, P, pH and EC in the later stages of the crop. A soil water content close
to the saturation in the upper layer in the superficial irrigation affected the yield of the
crop. Greater availability of P in the root zone and pH values close to the optimal may
also have contributed to improving yield in subsurface irrigation.

Keywords: soil moisture, fertigation, wetting patterns, subsurface irrigation, efficiency

INTRODUCTION
Drip irrigation system is a good alternative to improve the water-use efficiency in
agriculture because it can save more than 50% of the volume used by surface irrigation
system, even surge irrigation, with a significant yield increase and a significant nutrient
leaching reduction (Hanson et al., 1997; Thompson et al., 2009; Khalid, 2012;). In the
subsurface drip irrigation, water saving in relation to surface drip irrigation may be due to the
soil evaporation decrease and a lower application as a result of a better water’s distribution
in the soil (Lucero-Vega et al., 2017), but also other advantages are reported such as: increase
in the physical and nutritional quality of the products because in the roots area it generates a
better environment to reach the nutrients absorption (Lamm and Camp, 2007), lower
incidence of diseases (Subbarao et al., 1997), it may be used treated water (Song et al., 2006),
and makes harvest and agricultural work easier (Thompson et al., 2009).
Despite technological advances in drip irrigation equipment and devices, currently it is
not making the most of its potential due to different causes but one that stands out is a poor
design of the irrigation system (Lamm et al., 2010). An accurate design and an adequate
operation of the irrigation system would propitiate a timely, sufficient and equal distribution
of water and fertilizers. In order to reach these aims it is necessary to know the patterns for
wetting and how the nutrients are being distributed in the ground, as well as other forms of
irrigation system management that help reduce issues like clogging (Martı́nez and Reca, 2014;
Ayars et al., 2015). As a result, there have been many studies around it; however, these have

aE-mail: [email protected]

Acta Hortic. 1253. ISHS 2019. DOI 10.17660/ActaHortic.2019.1253.25 183

XXX IHC – Proc. Int. Symp. on Water and Nutrient Relations and Mgt. of Hort. Crops
Eds.: A. Ben-Gal et al.
appointed the subject partially due to the difficulties and the high costs a comprehensive study
implies within the real conditions or similar in production. Most of the experimental studies
have focused on learning the effect of surface and subsurface drip irrigation on yield, without
the support of an explanation for the behavior of water and nutrients in the soil (Godoy-AÁ vila
et al., 2003; Enrı́quez-Sá nchez et al., 2007; Montemayor-Trejo et al., 2007). Mathematical
modeling is a way to approach the study of the behavior of water and nutrients in the soil
through different approaches (Kandelous and Simunek, 2010a; Kandelous and Simunek,
2010b; Moncef and Khemaies, 2016), but the drawback of these studies is that many of them
are not supported by experimental information (Cote et al., 2003; Samadianfard et al., 2012)
or were carried out in non-real conditions because they don’t consider the extraction of water
and nutrients by plants (Kandelous and Simunek, 2010b).
Due to the above, the objective of this work was to study the effect of surface drip
irrigation and subsurface drip irrigation at different depths in the yield and the dimensions of
the lettuce plant leaf, a crop of high demand worldwide, associated with the form of
distribution in the ground of the following elements and parameters: water, nitrogen,
phosphorus, potassium, potential of hydrogen and electrical conductivity. Three types of
depth were studied in the subsuperficial drip irrigation to obtain the best results since the
optimum depth of installation depends on the characteristics of the soil and the flow from the
emitter (Camp, 1998; Ajdary et al., 2007).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Study area
The experiment was carried out in a Venlo type greenhouse, located in the facilities of
the Autonomous University of Chapingo (Universidad Autó noma Chapingo), in the
Municipality of Texcoco, State of Mexico, at the geographic coordinates of 19°2’ North latitude
and 98°53’ West longitude and at an altitude of 2256 m.

Characteristics of the production system

Lettuce plants (Lactuca sativa) were planted on October 15, 2015, at 30 days of age, in
a loamy sandy clay soil in plastic containers of 50 cm of diameter and 90 cm high. The soil
water volumetric content values at wilting point (WP), field capacity (FC) and saturation (S)
were 20.3, 34.9 and 41.5%, respectively. One plant and one emitter per container were used,
both were installed in the center. Irrigation was done automatically with drip tape 203.2 μm
thick with emitter discharge rate of 1.0 L h-1, applying seven irrigations daily of 3 min each
and the same universal Steiner solution (Steiner, 1984) from transplant onto harvest.

Experimental design
Four treatments were implemented according to the installation depth of the irrigation
tape, and these were: surface installation (T1) and subsurface installation at depths of 10 cm
(T2), 15 cm (T3) and 20 cm (T4). Treatments were installed in two blocks, one of them as a
repetition of the other, and each treatment in each block was composed of a row of 12 plants
in an arrangement of 100×60 cm. The four treatments were irrigated and fertilized identically.

Soil measurements of moisture and nutrients

Soil samples from the wetting bulb were taken to determine the distribution patterns
of: volumetric water content (θv), inorganic nitrogen (N), available phosphorus (P), available
potassium (K), potential of hydrogen (pH) and electrical conductivity (EC). The samples were
taken from a mesh made in a vertical soil profile perpendicular to the drip tape at containers
center; with a size of 4×3 cm for humidity and 5×6 cm for N, P, K, pH and EC. The sampling to
determine the soil water content was made on four dates (October 19 and 22, and November
7, 14 and 19) and to determine the rest of the parameters were made in two (October 26 and
November 6). Samples were taken from three to four hours after applying the first irrigation
of the day, between 10 and 11 in the morning.
The gravimetric water contents (θg) of the samples were determined by recording the

184
weight of water lost after oven-drying the samples. Bulk density (ρ) measurements was made
to convert θg data to θv, it was obtained by the paraffin-coated clod method, pH and EC by a
device Conductronic model PC45. N, P and K were obtained by the Kjeldahl, Olsen (pH>7) and
Bray-Kurtz (pH<7), and ammonium acetate methods, respectively.

Response variables
The harvest was done on November 19; weight, height and width of the plants were
registered and then these variables were submitted to an analysis of variance (ANOVA) and to
a Tukey test to identify the best treatment.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The application of a Bartlet test for homogeneity of variances to the results of the
weight, length and width of the lettuce leaf made it possible to apply an ANOVA given that no
statistically significant differences (α=0.05) were found between the variances of the
treatments in the three variables. There were significant differences (α=0.05) between the
treatments for weight, but not for the length and width of the leaves (Table 1). The increases
in the performance of treatments T2, T3 and T4, with respect to T1 were 21.6, 27.0 and 32.7%,
respectively. Hanson et al. (1997) found a difference of up to 28% in lettuce yield in favor of
subsurface drip irrigation with a tape installed at a depth of 15 cm in a soil with a sandy loam
texture. The Tukey test showed that the subsurface installed tape produced higher yields
(weight) than the tape installed superficially, but there were no significant differences
between tapes installed subsurface (T2-T4).

Table 1. Average values of weight, width and length of the lettuce leaf.
Treatment Weight (g) Length (cm) Width (cm)
T1 211.00a 22.63a 6.67a
T2 256.55b 21.92a 6.33a
T3 267.96b 23.50a 7.42a
T4 279.92b 23.21a 6.88a
Values with different letters in each column are statistically different (Tukey, p≤0.05).

The highest production in the subsurface drip irrigation cannot be attributed by the
average soil water content since this was remained within the maximum soil water deficit
(MSWD) (Allen et al., 1998) during the entire crop cycle in T1-T4 treatments (Figure 1). In
addition, in the four measurements dates no statistically significant differences (α=0.05) were
observed in the Christiansen uniformity coefficient (CUC) and the statistical uniformity (Us)
(Camp et al., 1997) of the water content between the treatments, although numerically higher
values were observed in the subsurface irrigation. In the surface irrigation, the soil water
content remained within the MSWD, but not in the subsurface irrigation 4 and 7 days after the
transplant (19 and 22 October) with values slightly lower than the suggested minimum. Soil
moisture increased in the subsurface irrigation reaching the MSWD on November 7 and 14,
dates in which the plants had a high physiological activity for being in the stages of head
formation and maximum growth of leaves (Dı́az-Espino et al., 2011; Antú nez and Felmer,
2017; Saavedra-del R., 2017) (Figure 2).
Although, the average water content in the soil in general was higher in the superficial
irrigation than in the subsurface irrigation on days 4 and 7 after the transplant (October 19
and 22, respectively) (Figure 2), the first 8 cm of depth were above the water content at field
capacity, and the first 4 cm were close to the saturation point (Figure 3). The patterns shown
in Figure 3 were similar for those observed in surface irrigation on the other three sampling
dates, but for the subsurface irrigation the upper layers had a higher water content in later
stages. A lack of oxygenation in the early stages in the superficial irrigation may have limited
plant development because the saturated surface layer affected the neck of the plant and the
fall or rot of the leaves that were in contact with the soil as was observed by Serrano-Cermeñ o
(1996) and Subbarao et al. (1997). In the subsurface irrigation, the water was distributed

185
radially and more or less uniformly close the emitters, moving by the effect of capillary forces
at the top of the soil, generating water contents lower than saturation, but close to field
capacity.

Figure 1. Average and standard deviation (SD) values of soil water content for the entire crop
cycle.

Figure 2. Average and SD values of soil water content, throughout the crop cycle.

Comparing the N, P and K, pH and EC values obtained with those required in the soil for
the optimal development of the lettuce crop (Castellanos et al., 2000), the following was
observed: the pH of the four treatments was within the permissible range (6.5 to 7.3), but in
the subsurface irrigation treatments they were very close to the optimum value (6.5); the EC
was lower than the maximum allowed value (≤1 dS m-1) in the four treatments; N was much
higher than the optimal range (41 to 60 mg kg-1) in the four treatments; P was lower than the
lower limit of the optimal range (21 to 30 mg kg-1) in the four treatments; and the K was within
the desired range (201 to 300 mg kg-1) in the four treatments (Figure 4).

186
Figure 3. Behavior of the volumetric water content in the soil (%) and flow direction for the
irrigation drip tapes installed at four depths at 14 November.

The distribution of N, P, pH and EC in the wetting bulb did not show statistically
significant differences between treatments (α=0.05) on October 26, but there were
differences on November 6; in the distribution of K, significant differences were observed in
both dates. The pH values of November 6 were closer to the optimum value in the subsurface
irrigation treatments. The average values observed for the parameters pH, EC, N, P and K were
lower on November 6, because on that date the plant consumed more nutrients than October
26 because its water and nutrient uptake was greater (Antú nez and Felmer, 2017; Saavedra-
del R., 2017). This behavior implied a saving of N and K, and a greater deficiency of the P in
the four treatments in the final stage of the crop.
On November 6, when there were statistically significant differences between the
treatments, a greater availability of phosphorus was observed in the root zone in the
subsurface irrigation (Figure 5).
pH values closer to optimal values and more uniform distribution patterns for water
(and nutrients) may have increased plant yield. This especially applies to phosphorus as soil
content was low and, generally, mobility in the soil is low. Therefore, a subsurface application
closer to roots may have been beneficial for phosphorus uptake and crop production.

187
Figure 4. Average and SD values of the potential of hydrogen (pH), inorganic nitrogen (N),
phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) in the wetting bulb.

Figure 5. Behavior of phosphorus concentration (P) in the soil for the irrigation drip tapes
installed at four depths at 6 November.

188
CONCLUSIONS
The subsurface drip irrigation statistically was better than the superficial yield, but
there were no significant differences in plant size (length, width). Subsurface irrigation
increased plant yield with 27.1% compared to surface application (average of T2-T4), but no
significant differences between installation depth of the subsurface irrigation were observed.
No statistically significant differences in the uniformity of soil water content in the
wetting bulb between treatments were observed. Significant differences in the distribution of
N, P, pH and EC in the early stages of the crop (two weeks before harvest) were observed, while
K was significantly different in both the early stages (11 days after transplant) and in the later
stages.
High soil water content in the upper layer in the early stages of the crop affected the
yield in surface irrigation. Higher yield in subsurface irrigation may also partly be due to
greater availability of phosphorus in the root zone.

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