The production of healthy and vigorous nursery trees in protected environment is the strategy adopted by Brasilian citrus industry to avoid diseases propagation and to improve citrus grove efficiency. A mandatory program for citrus nursery trees certification was established, in the State of São Paulo in 2001, which determine that the nurseries must be produced in pathogen free substrate under screen-house conditions. There are little scientific information on nutrient demand, fertilizer sources and management to advise this program. This project was set up in order to determine nutrient balance for Valencia sweet orange nurseries production, on two rootstocks (Rangpur lime and Swingle citrumelo) using two fertilizer management programs (fertirrigation and slow release fertilizers). The demands of nutrient were evaluated monthly, summing up 250 days. The treatments were arranged in a 2 x 2 x 8 factorial experiment with four replications. The results showed that substrate have both sink and source effects on nutrient availability to nurseries. The N, K e P losses by leaching were respectively of 8, 26 and 12% when the nutrient was applied by fertirrigation and respectively of 7, 56 and 10% for slow release fertilizers. Thus, the advantage of slow release fertilizers to decrease nutrient losses by leaching in relation to fertirrigation was not observed in citrus nursery production in screen-house.
screen house; substrate; nutrient losses and balance
