Simple and environment-friendly technique that promotes high fruit set in tomatoes
1997
Santos, P.J.A. | Maghirang, R.G. | Quintos, M.G. (Philippines Univ. Los Banos, College, Laguna (Philippines). Inst. of Plant Breeding)
Poor heat tolerance is major constraint in the off-season production of many vegetables. Tomato, in particular, has low fruit set under night temperatures not lower than 21 deg C (Villareal and Lai, 1979). This problem can be overcome by either improving the heat tolerance of tomato through breeding or finding means to substitute for the low temperature requirement for fruit setting. However, not all commercial varieties of tomato at present have heat tolerance high enough for off-season cropping. Hence, a simple technique has been developed at IPB to induce higher fruit set in tomato without the need of using any auxin-like plant growth regulators or any other chemicals. The technique not only uses cold water (4-6 deg C) to be sprayed onto the flowering plants in the early morning. With this method, fruit setting was increased from 0 to 16.3 percent in Improved Pope and from 1.5 to 23.3 percent in Shalom. The results also indicate that there is a need to redefine heat tolerance in tomato. The high night temperature (which varied from 21 to 25 deg C in this study) was proven not critical at all in the processes leading to a successful fruit set. While the possibility of using this technique for the same purpose in other crops is now being explored, the plant breeders can also use this simple approach to make successful crosses during warm season
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