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| Effect of Wetting Agent on Water Absorption and Retention of Nursery Substrate and Growth of Cucumber Plug Seedlings |
| ZHENG Xu1，2，ZHANG Aiai1，2，SHANG Qingmao1，2* |
| （1National Nanfan Institute，Chinese Academy of Agriculture Sciences，Sanya 572024，Hainan，China；2Institute of Vegetables and Flowers，Chinese Academy of Agriculture Sciences，State Key Laboratory of Vegetable Biobreeding，Beijing 100081，China） |
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Abstract Abstract：The characteristics of water absorption and retention in substrate can directly affect its moisturecontent and growth and development of vegetable plug-seedlings．In order to investigate the effect of wettingagent on water absorption and retention in substrate plug-seedling，this paper studied the effects of addingwetting agent on water absorption quantity，and evaporation rate of substrate with different particle sizes，andgrowth of cucumber plug-seedlings．The results showed that the water absorption rate and absorption quantityof small particle substrate were significantly lower than those of large particle substrate．Wetting agent wasmore conducive to increase the water absorption quantity of small particle substrate，equivalently to increase17.32 percentage points comparing with large particle substrate．Adding wetting agent had simultaneouslyincreased the water absorption and evaporation rates of plug-seedling substrate，and maintained a relatively high substrate moisture content throughout the 1，2 and 3 water absorption-evaporation processes．Addingwetting agent to substrate could effectively promote the growth and development of cucumber plug-seedlingsunder small particle size substrate conditions；and significantly improve the root shoot ratio and clumping rateof cucumber seedlings．The above results indicated that adding wetting agent to substrate could effectivelyimprove the characteristics of water absorption and retention of small particle size nursery substrates，and wasconducive for the formation of strong cucumber plug-seedlings．
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Received: 16 July 2023
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