Water and Salinity stress on morphological characteristics, quality and quantity of Sweet Pepper in smart drip irrigation system

Salinity after the water stress is the most important environmental stresses that affect plants and greatly reduces the growth of sensitive plants. The sweet pepper plant is sensitive to water stress or moderately sensitive to salinity. Salt will reduce the yield and quality of pepper. In order to determine the effect of water stress (deficit irrigation) and salinity on the quality and yield of sweet pepper in greenhouse testing of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, is done over the winter and spring of 2013-2014. The smart drip irrigation system is used for irrigate the sweet pepper. By using REC-P55 humidity sensors that are in the pot, water requirement was determined. Orders were given to the controller to start and end of irrigation. Irrigation treatments included 100% (I1), 85% (I2) and 70% (I3) of water requirement and three levels of salinity 1.2 (S1), 3 (S2) and 6 (S3) dS/m, and with three replications in a factorial experiment in a completely randomized design was applied. The results show that salinity and water stress on yield, fruit weight and number of fruits had a significant effect on the level of 1%. The combined effect of salinity and water stress on the fruit yield had a significant effect on the level of 5%. With increasing salinity and lowering irrigation water fruit yield, length and diameter of fruit and root volume decreased. Deficit irrigation is increasing the length of roots. The effect of salinity and deficit irrigation on qualitative components of sweet pepper has shown that by increasing salinity and lack of irrigation water, color uniformity and health fruit was reduced, as well as the weight has fallen.