Doses of caffeine on the development and performance of pepper crops under greenhouse

Abstract

A number of experiments on plant organs demonstrated that caffeine acts as a growth stimulator. In this study we aimed to determine the influence of caffeine on development of pepper crops under stress in the autumn-winter cycle, as peppers stop growing and developing in November and January. The experiments were conducted to determine how caffeine applied to the soil by fertigation, with doses of 2.25 µM and 9.00 µM for T1 and T2, respectively, compared to the control crop, affect the morphological development and performance of the pepper crops during two crop cycles (2008-2009 and 2009-2010 in autumn-winter). Throughout the whole vegetative plant cycle, performance parameters of fruit quality and the influence on the morphological development were obtained on different dates. With respect to the remainder of the morphological and production parameters, no significant differences were discovered in either of the evaluated cycles, thus leading to the conclusion that the two doses of caffeine, 2.25 µM and 9.00 µM, did not have any stimulant effect on the development and performance of the pepper crop during both cycles. Total yields were unaffected by either treatment, 4.89, 4.90 and 4.88 kg/m2 for the first assay and 5.28, 5.23 and 5.28 for the second, for treatments control and caffeine dosses 2.25 µM y 9.00 µM respectively.