Performance of pineapple varieties cultivated with plastic mulch in organic production system

The insertion of tropical fruits into an organic production system poses the challenge of developing alternatives to practices used in the conventional system, such as for chemical weed control with herbicides. Plastic mulch can be an efficient alternative for this control, reducing labor demand. The objective of this work was to evaluate the agronomic performance of pineapple ‘Pérola’ and ‘BRS Imperial’ cultivated with plastic soil cover in an organic production system, under the environmental conditions of the Chapada Diama ntina, Bahia, Brazil. Both cultivars were studied with and without soil cover, in separate large plots, with four replications of 150 plants each, from May 2015 to December 2016. The planting was in a double row system, at spacing of 1.20×0.40×0.40 m, with drip irrigation. The treatments were evaluated based on vegetative growth variables (stem diameter, leaf number, ‘D’ leaf length, weight and width), production (fruit weight and size, number of slips), weed control costs and incidence of plants with presence of mealybugs and symptoms of fusariosis (Fusarium guttiforme) and wilt (PMWV). The use of soil plastic mulch increased fruit length and weight of both cultivars and the number of slips in ‘Imperial’. Plastic mulch also caused an increase in the number of plant leaves, but decreased weight and length of the 'D' leaf of ‘Imperial’. The number of plants with mealybugs and with wilt and Fusarium symptoms was lower in the treatments with plastic soil cover for both cultivars. Cost of weed control was lower for the plastic cover treatment due to the decrease in labor demand for hand weeding.