Uso e extrato de algas na produção de mudas de maracujá.

Brazil is the world's largest producer of passion fruit, due to favorable climatic conditions for production, as well as the high acceptance of the fruit. The passion fruit crop has great socioeconomic importance, being cultivated mainly by small producers. Thus, it is strictly linked to family farming, which values sustainability and in turn generates jobs and income. Commercial orchards are implanted using seedlings propagated by seeds due to the ease of obtaining and multiplication. In view of this, biostimulants are an important alternative for the development of quality seedlings, since the seedling is the main production inputThe experiment was conducted in a greenhouse at the IFMG Campus-Bambuí, using passion fruit seeds of the cultivar BRS Gigante Amarelo F1 cultivated in styrofoam trays with Maxfertil substrate enriched with 6 kg.m - ³ of Lithothamnium calcareum, being irrigated daily. A total of 120 seedlings were transplanted into a plastic tray with 24 cells and placed in a continuous floating system, with four treatments at doses of 3, 6, 9 and 12 mL.L-¹ and the control containing only water. The analyzed variables were plant height, size of the third leaf and number of leaves every five days and the solution was completed every three days by recomposing the 10 liters of water with biostimulant in the respective dose. Seedlings were collected to determine root and shoot dry mass. The samples were crushed to carry out analysis of total sugars. Statistical analyzes were performed using the R Software. To compare the means of treatments, the Tukey Test was performed with a significance level of 5%. There were no significant differences for the variables height number of leaves, length of third leaf and root length. However, the fresh and dry mass of the root and aerial part, as well as the total sugar content, showed significant differences considering the time of collection and the doses of seaweed extract used.