The mulch, an alternative against the climatic change and in favor of the sustainable local development

Abstract

The objective of the research was to consider the use of biomass as soil mulch in tomato cultivation. We carried out two experiments in two agricultural ecosystems. We used as mulch, a biomass obtained from two different farms. We arranged the experiments into random blocks with three and four repetitions. Experiment 1 consisted of three treatments: one covered by Panicum maximun Pers., another one covered by Scirpus lacustris Lin., and the third was the control. Experiment 2 consisted of four treatments: one covered by rice (Oryza sativa L.) crops remains, another one covered by guinea, another one covered by Musa paradisiaca L. leaves, and the last one was the control. During eight weeks, we carried out soil temperature measurements at 8:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., 2:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. We also assessed weed growth, morph-agronomic features of the crops (number of fruits per plant, fruit diameter, and fruit mass) and production yield. Temperature was lower for covered treatments than for the control, in which heat loss increased at night. The weed growth factor had the best results in covered treatments, as well as morph-agronomic features. Yields in both experiments were statistically superior when used mulch.