Water Deficit as a Limiting Factor to the Initial Growth of Coffee Conilon Variety Diamante

The water deficit is considered one of the main limiting factors of agricultural production, studies that aim to understand it become essential for improving productivity and rational use of water resources. Thus, the objective of this work was to evaluate the influence of the reduction of the fraction of transpirable soil water (FTSW) under the growth variables of the nine clones that compose the variety “Diamante Incaper ES8112” of the coffee Conilon and to estimate the critical FTSW (when the growth potential is reduced by the limitation of the transpiration process). The nine experiments were conducted in a greenhouse, located in the Center of Agrarian Sciences and Engineering of the Federal University of Espírito Santo, in the city of Alegre-ES, (20º45' S, 41º32' W and altitude of 269.0 m). The present study was carried out in the greenhouse, located in the Center of Agrarian and Engineering Sciences of the Federal University of Espírito Santo, in the city of Alegre-ES, Brazil. The experiment was carried out in a 9x2 factorial scheme, being clones of the variety Jequitibá Incaper ES 8122 in 9 levels and 2 levels of water regime (T0 - irrigated during the whole experiment, not suffering water deficit; Td - induced water deficit until the plants reached 10% of the relative transpiration of the T0 treatment), in a completely randomized design with 8 replications. The variables evaluated were: relative transpiration (RT), plant height (PH) and leaf area (LA). At the end of the experiments it was verified that the clones are affected at different times, showing that they have different water needs, being clone 104 characterized as the most resistant to the water deficit in the soil, for keeping the TR to a lower value of FTSW (0.47) and clone 108 was characterized as the most sensitive to soil moisture variation, with critical FTSW value of 0.82.