Effect of Adding Magnetic Iron and Fertilizer Rates on Vegetative Growth, Yield, Quality and Storability of Cucumber

Reducing the use of mineral fertilizers with maximizing their efficiency is a requirement of great importance for world agricultural production and leads to preserving the environment and reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), which will reduce the impacts of climate change on the agricultural sector.This experiment was performed to evaluate the efficacy of magnetic iron under different rates of mineral fertilizer on the production, fruit quality and storability of cucumber.The experiment was carried out in the experimental farm of Dokki site for Protected Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation and Laboratory of Handling of Vegetable Department, Horticulture Research Institute, Giza, Egypt, during two successive seasons of 2018/2019 and 2019/2020.Three rates of recommended mineral fertilizer (100, 75 and 50%) of NPK with and without adding magnetic iron (soil addition at rate 5g/plant), were applied on cucumber (Gianco F1).All vegetative growth properties, nutritional status of plants, yield and properties of cucumber fruits were improved significantly by increasing mineral fertilizer rate to 100%.The plants treated with magnetic iron recorded a significant increment in growth, NPK content of plants, yield and properties of cucumber fruits compared to untreated plants.The highest yield was produced by using 100% mineral fertilizer with adding magnetic iron.Noteworthy, application of 75% mineral fertilizer with adding magnetic iron had achieved yield and fruit quality higher than using 100% mineral fertilizer without adding magnetic iron.The highest nutrient use efficiency was true using magnetic iron with 50% mineral fertilizer.The treatments of 100 and 75% mineral fertilizer with adding magnetic iron improved the storability of cucumber fruits (reduced weight loss and color change; maintained fruit firmness, TSS and ascorbic acid content) and exhibited good appearance till 16 days of storage at 10 °C plus two days at 15 °C as a shelf life compared to using 100% mineral fertilizer without adding magnetic iron which had less effect in this concern.