The increasing use of substrates on agricultural production and controlled environment has been promoting its large scale production. In this way, chemical, biological and physical characterizations of these materials are necessary to the quality standard proposal and evaluation which must precede its commercialization. High plants development has been influenced by substrates physical properties, mainly on irrigation handling, where understanding about water retention and pore aeration is essential. Water volume determination on substrates used during experiments has been necessary, and in this way the use of the Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) can represent an advance about this kind of researches. Based on water retention curve determination, this research, has been carried on physical characterizations of two organic substrates: coconut fiber and pine bark substrates. Also, a calibration curve has been adjusted for each tested substrates, and through TDR technique was estimated the water content. In a general, except to the dry density, the tested substrates has showed similar characteristics about its water-air relation. In the range readily available water, for both tested substrates, the TDR technique has showed a good performance on the water content estimative, with a determination coefficient of 0.9319 to the pine barks and 0.9385 to the coconut fiber.
water content; water retention; irrigation management; TDR; substrates