Estimulación temprana en plántulas de banano (musa × paradisiaca) clon williams con diferentes dosis de algas marinas granuladas aplicadas edáficamente.

Abstract

Agriculture is one of the most important activities in the world's economic and social development. In Ecuador, banana production represents more than 3% of GDP, making it the most important area of economic income for Ecuadorian families, therefore, it is vital to identify and implement techniques to obtain better yields, this can be achieved through optimal and timely development and vegetative growth of the plant, however, many producers for lack of advice and technical knowledge, ignore the conditions that can cause stress in banana plants and delay the development and vegetative growth. Due to the above-mentioned background, the present research was carried out with the evaluation of different doses of biostimulants of granulated seaweed extracts in the banana farm "La Envidia" located in Palestina, belonging to the parish of La Iberia, canton El Guabo, province of El Oro, Ecuador, with the purpose of determining the effect of the edaphic application of granulated seaweed extract Ascophyllum nodosum (L), through the evaluation of growth and vegetative development variables, to improve early stimulation in a banana plant "Musa x paradisiaca", clone Williams. The study was carried out with 1 control and 3 treatments with doses of 7 g, 15 g and 30 g of Max Sea sailer granulated seaweed extract product. An experimental design in completely randomized blocks (DBCA) was used, formed by three blocks with four treatments each, reaching a total of 12 experimental units, each composed of 6 banana plants clone Gran Nain, established with a planting frame of 1 meter by 1 meter. The vegetative variables evaluated were plant height, number of leaves, leaf area, pseudostem stem, number and length of roots, and the mass variables were fresh and dry weight of leaves, pseudostem and roots; the data were collected weekly over a total period of 70 days, the weights were obtained in the Soil Laboratory of the Technical University of Machala by means of the drying oven and weighing scale equipment. The statistical analysis was carried out with IBM SPSS Statistics software, in which, to ensure the representativeness of the sample, outliers were detected and eliminated through an exploratory analysis of data by means of box plots and biases, and then the assumptions of normality and homoscedasticity were validated by means of the Shapiro Wilk normality test and Levene's test, respectively. The existence of significant differences between the study treatments was determined by means of a univariate analysis of variance for each dependent variable, followed by the classification of homogeneous groups by means of post hoc tukey tests at 5% with a significance level of 95%. Finally, a Pearson correlation analysis was performed to determine those variables that directly and inversely affect the development of another response variable. The results showed that the dose with the best efficiency in the variables number of roots (113), weight of dry roots (132 g), weight of dry and fresh pseudostem (1000 g and 4800 g), weight of fresh and dry leaves (1550 g and 340 g), was that of 30 g of Max Sea sailer product. The other study variables shared the best efficiency with doses of 15 g and 30 g of product, showing that there are no significant differences between T2 and T3, which belong to the same subset. With the implementation of seaweed extracts in the nutritional plan, it is possible to obtain plants with great vegetative vigor since it increased the leaf area (1.43 m2 ) in comparison with the control (0.43 m2 ), the number of roots (113) and the stem (49 cm), which are the main variables responsible for good vegetative development. The storage and availability of water in the vegetative parts such as leaves, roots and pseudostem increased, reaching values of 1210 g, 432 g, 3800 g of moisture weight. Finally, the correlations that stand out the most are the plant height with the number of roots, and the latter with all the study variables, a situation that was expected since the seaweed extract contains phytohormones precursors of plant growth and organic matter that improves soil conditions and allows better root development, and these in turn absorb more nutrients from the soil allowing optimal growth and vegetative development.