Harvest seasons and pruning management in pepper: production and pungency of the fruits

Abstract

Changes in plant architecture, such as apical pruning and harvesting at the right time, are management practices to obtain not only greater fruit production, but mainly quality and pungent fruits, preferred by the consumer market. We evaluated the effect of management of pruning and harvest seasons on growth, production and pungency of fruits conducted in the field. Nine seasons of harvest were studied {90, 101, 116, 131, 146, 161, 176, 191, 206 and 221 days after transplanting (DAT)} and two management systems (pruning and no pruning). The treatments were arranged in a factorial design (9x2) with split plot in a randomized block design with three replications. The agronomic traits analyzed were: height, chlorophyll, leaf area, soluble solids, number of fruits and pepper yield. The content of capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin was determined using fruits harvested in two seasons (146 and 161 DAT) and in management systems (pruning and no pruning), in a factorial scheme (2x2), in a randomized complete block design with five replications. Growth and production traits did not differ significantly for pruning and no pruning managements, with an average of 71.8 fruits/plant and productivity of 429.7 g/plant. The agronomic traits were adjusted to the quadratic model. The maximum yield (529.09 g/plant) and the maximum number of fruits per plant (95.34) were estimated at 164.83 and 163.21 DAT, respectively. The use of pruning resulted in fruits with a higher content of capsaicin (363.89 mg/kg) and dihydrocapsaicin (198.27 mg/kg) at 161 DAT. Pruning management results in more pungent and better quality fruits for industry, and the maximum production of BRS Mari pepper was estimated at 164.83 DAT, important information for pepper producers, in order to schedule the harvests.

Tópicos em Agroecologia, Volume 3

“…Em relação à caracterização bromatológica, essa ainda não é realizada efetivamente a partir de descritores, contudo, os trabalhos publicados avaliam o potencial hidrogeniônico (pH), Sólidos Solúveis Totais (SST) e Acidez Total Titulável (ATT), entre outras características. Os estudos disponíveis concentraram-se na identificação e quantificação de capsaicinoidesum composto importante no gênero, que confere a pungência aos frutos com diversos benefícios para a saúde, sendo importante também para fins industriais, farmacêuticos dentre outros (PAULUS et al, 2017;NAVES et al, 2019).…”

Métodos estatísticos na avaliação da repetibilidade genotípica em lima ácida ‘Tahiti’

“…More usual statistical methodologies have been used to deal with data from different measurements in woody perennial crops, such as repeatability models (Alves et al 2019). The repeatability models are mixed models that consider the genetic and permanent environment as random effects (Paulus et al 2017;Oliveira et al 2021). However, this methodology has some limitations, such as the requirement of homogeneous correlations between measurements as well as the normality of residuals (Viana and Resende 2014).…”