The effect of starting the irrigation season at different dates and the effect of multiple fertilizer applications, through fertigation and traditional fertilizer hand spreading, were evaluated in an experiment conducted in a 12 years old 'Catuaí' coffee orchard, with plants in a 3.5 by 0.8 m spacing, located at the Múquem Farm - FAEPE/UFLA in Lavras, MG. An experimental design with 3 completely randomized blocks was used. Each block was split in 4 randomized portions submitted to four different fertilization treatments: fertigation with three different numbers of multiple applications (P4 = 36; P3 = 24; P2 = 12) and multiple (P1=12) fertilizer applications by hand spread. Each one of the plots corresponding to a fertilization treatment was subdivided, without randomization, in 4 subplots: a non irrigated control (D) treatment receiving an even 4way fertilizer split application and three irrigated subplots with the irrigation season starting at different dates (A =06/01; B = 07/15; C = 09/01 and D correspond to the). Crop yield (97/98 harvest season) was analyzed considering the amount of coffee picked by harvest manual in the cloth, coffee picked in the ground and the sum of both methods. Measured weight values were submitted to variance analysis and test of averages. The analysis of variance showed a significant effect of irrigation timing over all parameters, the amount of coffee picked in the ground was affected by fertigation, interaction between irrigation and fertilization split affected coffee picked by harvest manual in the cloth the total amount of picked coffee. The test of averages showed that the A parcel (irrigated starting in 06/01) presented the best yield results, 56.6 bags/ha of coffee picked by harvest manual in the cloth and a total of 67.7 bags/ha, that represents a 73% increase on coffee picked by harvest manual in the cloth and a 68,4% increase in the total coffee picked in relation to the non irrigated control treatment. Considering the interaction between fertilizer split and irrigation timing, it was noticed that only for the A treatment there is an effect of fertilizer timing, by this way, it was noticed that 12 fertilizer multiple applications, by fertigation or hand spreading, achieve the best results, 82.3 bags/ha and 81.3 bags/ha respectively.
Coffee-growing; coffee yield; irrigation management; Coffea arabica
