poster - International Conference of Agricultural Engineering

Studies related to population arrangements in irrigated crops are essential for a greater
maximization of production and use of natural resources. Esperancini and Paes (2005) found
that the denser culture system, the best economic results when using drip irrigation. Thus,
the purpose of this research was to evaluate the effect of drip irrigation under different
population arrangements on coffee grain yield and grain size classification according to sieve
retention of two harvests (2008/2009 and 2009/2010).
2. Material and Methods
The experiment was carried out in the Agribusiness Technological Development Cluster of
Northeast of São Paulo State, located at latitude 21°28'S, longitude 47°00'W and altitude 663
m. The climate according to Köppen is Cwa, featuring dry winters and warm and wet
summers. Seedlings of Coffea arabica L. cultivar Yellow Catuaí were transplanted between
March 6th and 7th, 2006, and the 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 crop cycles were assessed.
The experimental design was a 6 x 2 factorial scheme in randomized blocks, with four
replications. The six densities of plantation were E1 (1.60 x 0.50); E2 (1.60 x 0.75); E3 (1.60
x 1.00); E4 (3.20 x 0.50); E5 (3.20 x 0.75) and E6 (3.20 x 1.00), corresponding to 12,500;
8,333; 6,250; 6,250; 4,127 and 3,125 plants ha -1 , respectively, which were divided according
to the availability of water (irrigated – I – or non-irrigated – NI – groups).
Fertilization was performed according to Bulletin 200 of the Campinas Agronomic Institute
(Fazuolli et al. 1998) based on the result of the soil chemical analysis. Fertirrigation was
performed once a week, except during water restriction period (July-August). In the nonirrigated
treatments, three applications were manually performed, along with the rainy
months (October, November and January).
Meteorological data were daily collected from the Automatic Weather Station located
approximately 500 m from the experimental area.
Precipitation (mm)
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Temperature (ºC)
Precipitation
Date (Month - years)
Average air temperature
Figura 1 - Monthly distribution of precipitation and average air temperature, during the two years of cultivation
of coffee in Mococa-SP, Brazil.
The amount of water applied depended on the irrigation interval, the climatic demand
(reference evapotranspiration), undertaken by the Penman-Monteith method, and the
estimated crop evapotranspiration, according to Allen et al. (1998). Irrigation was suspended
for 60 days during July and August for the imposition of water deficit, in order to promote