Deficit irrigation and silicate spray applied since blooming period improved strawberry fruit quality without reducing fruit size

The drought stress created by deficit irrigation has been widely introduced into production for fruit quality improvement, whilst silicon is considered as a functional element in plant antistress process. To explore the influence of deficit irrigation and silicon application on the strawberry fruit quality and the plant’s response to drought stress, a split-plot experiment was conducted. The impacts of the treatments start-time was also evaluated. The plants were subjected to two irrigation regimes, deficit irrigation (DI) or full irrigation, and two foliar sprays, 0.01 mol L− 1 Na2SiO3 (Si) or water, with two treatment start-time, as after first bloom (Fr) or after transplanting. Therefore, there were 6 different treatments (considering treatment start-time) and a control group, which were DI, FrDI, Si, FrSi, DISi, FrDISi and CK. As a result, the DI significantly increased the leaf ascorbate, leaf anthocyanins and specific leaf weight by 93.5