Comparison in Water Consumption, Plant and Fruit Growth of Different Europe Eggplant Cultivars in Coir Substrate Hydroponics under High Temperature Conditions
This study aims to select eggplant cultivars adaptive to the hot temperature period greenhouse climate by water consumption, and growth performance of plants and fruits of different European eggplant cultivars, including ‘Bartok (BA)’, ‘Bowie (BO)’, ‘Black Pearl (BP)’, ‘Ishbilia (I)’, ‘Mabel (M)’, ‘Vestale (VE)’ and ‘Velia (VL)’, in substrate hydroponic cultivation under hot and humid greenhouse conditions. On the 118 DAT, the leaf number and stem dry weight were highest in ‘VL’, followed by ‘M’, and there was no significant difference in leaf dry weight among cultivars. The marketable fruit number per plant was 16.4 for ‘M’, which was higher than other cultivars, and ‘VE’ and ‘VL’ were 8.5 and 8.8, respectively. The weight per fruit was low for ‘M’ at 136 g, and the highest in ‘VE’ and ‘VL’ at 332 and 281 g, respectively. There was no significant difference in fruit production per plant. In this study, ‘M’, which has high water use efficiency and a large number of fruits, and ‘VL’, which required less quantity to water consumption for producing 200 g of fruit and had a high product weight, will have excellent adaptability in the UAE greenhouse condition.