Uso de dendrómetros para la programación de riego en cultivo de cacao (Theobroma cacao) en la Estación Experimental de Sapecho

The management of water resources is very important for the production and profitability of crops. However, the growing scarcity of water makes it necessary to implement irrigation scheduling under efficient irrigation systems to optimize water use efficiency. The objective was focused on developing the necessary bases to program the irrigation of cocoa (Theobroma cacao) exclusively using measurements of the maximum daily contraction of the trunk (MCD), which was carried out at the Sapecho Experimental Station, Sud Yungas province of the department of La Paz, with a completely randomized block design, with treatments of T1 = 100% irrigation and T2 = 50% irrigation plus a Witness (T0), the results indicated that the MCD is a sensitive indicator to diagnose changes in the state cocoa water, in this sense it was possible to obtain reference equations for the MCD with respect to the climatic variables of maximum and average temperature. It was possible to verify that the application of irrigation had an effect on the production of fruits that had an increase in yield with the application of the different treatments, being that T1 presented better results with 852.47 kg/ha, followed by T2 with 652.67 kg/ha unlike the control T0 that presented 205.93 kg/ha.