Fertilization is an important part of citrus crop management. However, limited details are available about the fertilization approach on citrus plant development. A pot experiment for the fertilization approaches and fertigation levels were conducted in this study. Four fertilization approaches, namely, drip fertigation (DF), broadcast fertilization (CK+), hole fertilization (HF) and pour fertilization (PF) were tested. The fertigation level treatment included 100% (DF-337.5), 80% (DF-270), 60% (DF-202.5) and 40% (DF-135) fertilizer supply with DF, and the 100% fertilizer supply with broadcast fertilization were served as control (CK). The results showed that DF not only increased the absorptions of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) but also promoted citrus plant height, stem diameter and dry weight. In fruit quality, DF had the highest fruit total soluble solid (TSS) and titratable acidity (TA) contents. For fertilizer loss, DF had the lowest N and K leaching losses of 9.26% and 4.05%, respectively, and the lowest N and K runoff losses among the approaches. Isotopic tracing with 15N indicated that DF had the highest fertilizer use efficiency. Based on the analysis of fertigation levels, DF approach with 60% fertilizer reduction could improve citrus plant development. Therefore, DF promoted citrus plant growth and fruit quality by accelerating fertilizer utilization and impairing fertilizer loss. The fertilizer amount in citrus production could be reduced significantly using DF.
Keywords: citrus; fertigation; fertilizer loss; fertilizer use efficiency (FUE); fruit quality; plant development.