Potential use of ash from sugarcane bagasse to produce passion fruit seedlings

The production of good quality passion fruit seedlings depends on substrates with adequate physical and chemical characteristics. Therefore, this experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of doses of ash from burning of sugarcane bagasse on improvement of traits of the substrate "gully soil". The experiment was set up in a greenhouse and arranged in randomized block design, in a 2x7x2 factorial scheme. The following factors and their respective levels were studied: (i) soil structure,- aggregating between 4 and 10 mm and <2 mm; (ii) ash doses - 0; 1.5; 3; 6; 12; 24; and 48 t ha-1; (iii) families of passion fruit - F29 and F48. The use of ash combined to the soil with structure <2mm significantly increased the production of shoot fresh mass and shoot dry mass for both families studied. The density of the substrate obtained by the mixture of ash and gully soil (soil) decreased as ash doses increased, regardless of the size of the aggregates and the family studied.