Determination of rainfall effects on kaolin clay coverage rates used in prevention plant from sunburn

Abstract

Sunburn, which is an important problem in agricultural products grown in arid and semi-arid regions, causes economic losses of up to 40-60% in some years. Sunburn occurs as a result of overheating of the surfaces of fruits exposed to high air temperature and solar radiation from the sun. Increase in the temperature stress for plants is observed during months of high temperature, this is one of the main reasons for many negative conditions (changes in fruit colour, cell death in plants, etc.) in fruits and leaves. While the shelf life of damaged agricultural products is shortened, deterioration is observed even in the storage stage. Today, different applications are made to reduce the sunburn in many kinds of fruits and sunburn damage can be significantly reduced as a result of these applications. For this purpose, it was aimed to reduce the temperature on the leaf surface by the application of kaolin clay (Trade name; Güneş Stop) applied to the plant surface at the beginning of the season. In the study; eight different concentrations of kaolin clay with tree application volume were applied and after the application, leaf samples of the citrus trees were taken from the predetermined regions, and the coverage rate was measured in an image processing program. From 8 different regions, 15 pieces of leaf were randomly taken from each region. The same process was carried out again by collecting leaf samples from the same regions after the rain; thus, the performance analysis of kaolin clay was determined after the rainfall. As a result of kaolin clay application; according to the results of image analysis of average leaf surface coverage rates obtained by regions and after the rainfall, the results obtained from the same regions showed that kaolin clay was washed at a rate of 39.64% with precipitation.