Abóbora sergipana (Curcubita moschata) submetida ao manejo com mulching

Abstract

Pumpkin cultivation is of great importance in the social sphere through the generation of employment and income, human food and an alternative source of animal food. However, despite the social, economic and nutritional importance of pumpkin culture, there are still limitations on the use of technologies that provide increased production and productivity in different regions of Brazil. The agronomic performance of the crop with the desired production and productivity depends on several factors, including nutritional management and weed control. In this sense, mulching appears as an alternative to reduce the damage caused by weeds, as well as reducing production costs. The objective of this work was to evaluate the production of pumpkin plants submitted to management using mulching. The experiment was carried out in the rural area of the municipality of São Francisco do Pará. A completely randomized design (DIC) was used in factorial, with four treatments (T1- 100% coverage with cardboard - mulching; T2- 50% coverage with cardboard -mulching; T3- with manual weeding spacing; T4- with mechanized mowing and 12 repetitions, totaling 336 plants in the experimental area. The averages were compared by the tukey test at 5% probability. With the result obtained, it was concluded that the cardboard mulch did not present benefits in the productivity of the Sergipe pumpkin culture, noting It was found that simpler cultural practices such as mowing and weeding obtained the best results in terms of fruit production throughout the experiment.