Articles
INFLUENCE OF MULCH OF PHOTOSELECTIVE PLASTIC FILMS ON THE YIELD AND ON THE PRECOCITY OF THE STRAWBERRY PLANT
In particular, strawberry plants on black polyethylene, on black P.V.C. and on two photoselective films – opaque to visible rays, but transparent to infra-red rays – have been compared to non-mulched reference plants.
The "Lassen" variety, particularly fitted to the weather conditions under which experiments have been made has given yield higher than 400q/ ha.
However, the unit-production on mulch appeared to be inferior to the unit-production of the reference plants.
This is probably due to a lack of water supply resulting from the difficulties set by mulch to the irrigation, which proves to be imperative if one considers the conditions of work.
Better yields were found on photoselective film mulch than on black film mulch.
Such differences are supposed to be due to the higher capacity for photo selective films to increase the temperature of the soil.
As a conclusion, though the results confirm some positive aspects which make mulch indispensable, they also emphasize the importance of certain irrigation problems caused by the application of this technique.