Rooting behavior and yield evaluation on the ten different accessions of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) grown in hanging basket containers

One of the difficulties in growing crops in containers is that root development may be hampered by the container's small interior space as well as the volume and type of growing medium it contains. Different genotypes planted in containers may have distinct rooting patterns, which may affect how the absorb nutrients and produce yield. To identify the variations in rooting behavior, this study examined the rooting behavior of ten distinct tomato genotypes composed of foreign and local accessions. Twenty-one grams of Nutricote sup TM slow-release fertilizer (13-11-11 +2MgO+ TE) were added to each hanging basket container, which held 3.5 kg of sterilized growing media mix consisting of a 2:1:1 ratio of garden soil, carbonized rice hull, and vermicompost. Ten sample plants for each tomato accession were used in the Randomized Complete Block Design experiment and repeated four times. A CanonScan Lide 400 Scanner was used to capture images of the dried lateral view of the roots. RhizoVision Explorer software was used to evaluate the lateral view scans of the tomato root images. Results showed that two accessions-GB 65462 from Cagayan Philippines, and PHL 4875 from Tainan, Taiwan-observed to have contrasting trends in terms is of the total root length, root dried weight, shoot biomass, and average fruit yield per plant. The accession from Taiwan has the significantly lower shoot biomass (43.99g), total root length (152368.70 px), and root dried weight (3.03g) but has the highest average fruit yield ne plant (111.70g) among the ten accessions. In contrast, the local tomato accession from Cagayan, has significantly longest roots (99165.69 px), highest shoot biomass (68.73g) and highest root dried weight (6.579) but significantly lowest fruit yield (56.94g) among the ten accessions. In addition, the combined average fruit yield and root dried weight per plant of the two accessions displayed moderate negative correlation (r=-0.6, p=0.05) using the Pearson correlation. Shorter and less dense roots and shoot but with higher yield indicates efficient nutrient uptake and partitioning in the confined root growing space o hanging basket containers. These findings could aid in the identification of appropriate accessions of tomato genotype's suitability for cultivation in hanging basket containers.