The objectives of present study were to develop and to calibrate a large-scale weighing lysimeter in order to estimate evapotranspiration of fruit plants. The equipment consisted of a metallic bucket (steel carbon) of circular design with total area of 5.72 m² and total mass of 10.5 t. A seedling of dwarf-green coconut palm was transplanted in lysimeter and maintained under same fertilization conditions of experimental field. For automation of the process, a mechanism of load relief based on systems of levers and counterbalances was used, leaning in a load cell with capacity of 200 kg and precision of 0.02% of its capacity. The output data of load cell were stored in an automatic data acquisition system. The relationship between mass variation (mm) and voltage (mV) of the load-cell lysimeter described a linear model with minimum hysterisis. Also, it can be concluded that the methodology used for the calibration of the weighing lysimeter was appropriate, showing a coefficient of determination of 0.99 for the calibration equation. Results also indicated that the large-scale weighing lysimeter can be used with success in the determination of evapotranspiration of fruit plants.
evapotranspiration; load cell; fruiting plants
