SUMMARY
Hot pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) is one of the main vegetable crops in Mexico. This because its great popularity among the population. Within this species, one of the cultivars that have more uses is the type “ancho”. Given the current scenario of economic and environmental crisis, growers of this crop have the need of supplying a balanced nutrition. The source and amount of fertilizer may drastically affect growth pattern, anatomy and morphology, as well as chemical and nutritional composition and therefore productivity and quality of fruits. Optimization on the use of fertilizers may be achieved through the determination of nutrient norms with multivariate methods such as Compositional Nutrient Diagnosis (DNC). DNC is supported by robust mathematical basis for a crop and a specific region. The aim of this study was to estimate the preliminary nutritional norms and identify significant nutritional interactions through DNC for pepper type ancho “San Martín” in region “Comarca Lagunera” during the spring-summer season 2015. Preliminary norms DNC were developed from a small database as mean and standard deviation of the row-centered log ratios (Vx) of five nutrients (N, P, K, Ca, and Mg) and an unknown value R, which comprises all the nutrients not analyzed and quantified chemically in ancho pepper. DNC preliminary norms are V*N = 0.42 ± 0.06, V*P = -3.24 ± 0.13, V*K = 0.48 ± 0.08, V*Ca = -0.21 ± 0.06, V*Mg = -0.82 ± 0.05, and * R5 V = = 3.38 ± 0.05. As result of this work, two significant negative interactions through principal component analysis were shown: P and K for high-yield population, while in the entire population and the low-yield population, negative interaction of P and Ca was found, which suggests cases of P-K and P-Ca antagonisms for this study.