Effect of balanced fertilization on production of pineapple in Hainan
IPNI-2008-CHN-HI24
15 Feb 2010
2009 Annual Interpretive Summary
This study continues to investigate the effect of fertilizer on yield and quality of pineapple on Hainan Island to develop fertilizer best management practices. The experiment consists of six treatments, including an optimal treatment (OPT) with 540-210-810 kg N-P2O5-K2O/ha and a series of nutrient omission plots. This design was based on soil testing and results from a previous field study. The site has very high nutrient leaching potential, with high rainfall, coarse-textured soil with poor structure, and extremely low nutrient adsorption capability. Thus, all fertilizers were split five times to minimize nutrient losses through runoff during the growing period.
Compared to the OPT, pineapple yield was significantly reduced under each individual nutrient omission treatment. The yield reduction was 16.4 t/ha (-29%) with N omission, 5.6 t/ha (-9%) with K omission, and 3.1 t/ha (-5%) with P omission. The K omission plots had slightly lower sugar contents in harvested fruit and the P omission plots had reduced contents of vitamin C compared to the OPT. Agronomic efficiency for the applied nutrients was measured at 30, 15, and 7 kg fruit increase per kg of N, P2O5, and K2O applied. Similar to research data obtained in Guangxi, more than 90% of these nutrients remained in the stem and leaf and only a small proportion was transferred to the fruit at harvest. This suggests that recycling of crop residue would be of great value. Hainan-08