scholarly journals Evaluating tomato production in open-field and high-tech greenhouse systems

2022 ◽  
pp. 130459
Author(s):  
Fidel Maureira ◽  
Kirti Rajagopalan ◽  
Claudio O. Stöckle
HortScience ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (9) ◽  
pp. 1372-1378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibukun T. Ayankojo ◽  
Kelly T. Morgan ◽  
Monica Ozores-Hampton ◽  
Kati W. Migliaccio

Florida is the largest fresh-market tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.)–producing state in the United States. Although vegetable production requires frequent water supply throughout the crop production cycle to produce maximum yield and ensure high-quality produce, overirrigation can reduce crop yield and increase negative environmental consequences. This study was conducted to evaluate and compare irrigation schedules by a real-time and location-specific evapotranspiration (ET)-based SmartIrrigation Vegetable App (SI) with a historic ET-based schedule (HI). A field study was conducted on drip-irrigated, fresh-market tomato during the Fall of 2015 and Spring of 2016 on a Florida sandy soil. The two scheduling methods (SI and HI) were evaluated for irrigation water application, plant biomass accumulation, nutrient uptake and partitioning, and yield in open-field tomato production. Treatments included 100% HI (T1); 66% SI (T2); 100% SI (T3); and 150% SI (T4). Treatments were arranged in a randomized complete block design with four replicates per treatment during the two production seasons. In both seasons, depth of irrigation water applied increased in the order of T2 < T3 < T1 < T4. Total water savings was greater for T3 schedule compared with T1 schedule at 22% and 16% for fall and spring seasons, respectively. No differences were observed among treatments for tomato biomass accumulation at all sampling periods during both seasons. However, T3 resulted in significantly greater total marketable yield compared with other treatments in both seasons. The impact of irrigation application rate was greater in fruit and leaf nitrogen accumulation compared with that of stem and root biomass. Based on the plant performance and water savings, this study concludes that under a sandy soil condition, a real-time location-specific irrigation scheduler improves irrigation scheduling accuracy in relation to actual crop water requirement in open-field tomato production.


2012 ◽  
Vol 113 ◽  
pp. 64-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Curtis D. Jones ◽  
Clyde W. Fraisse ◽  
Monica Ozores-Hampton

Crops ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-110
Author(s):  
Paola Sotelo-Cardona ◽  
Mei-Ying Lin ◽  
Ramasamy Srinivasan

Tomato continues to be one of the most important crops worldwide, and protected cultivation is practiced to overcome the biotic and abiotic stresses to which the plant are exposed during growth. In this study we evaluated the effect of colored net houses on the growth, yield and nutritional values, as well as the incidence of common pests under three different light conditions: (1) colored (magenta), (2) conventional (white), and open field conditions. A colored net house led the plants to grow taller with higher lycopene content, but recorded a higher number of whiteflies, compared to the conventional net house and open field conditions. Furthermore, plants under protected structures recorded lower SPAD values, but larger terminal leaflets, lower damage by leaf miners, but more damage caused by spider mites compared to those plants grown under open field conditions. Overall, we found that the use of colored net houses provided a positive effect on tomato production in terms of improvement in morphometric parameters, however, to obtain higher yields under this production system, it is important to reduce the elevated temperature and increase the relative humidity inside the protective structures to be adapted for local growing conditions in Taiwan.


HortScience ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 596-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael G. Bausher

Vegetative grafting has been proposed as a technique for managing diseases in tomatoes under open-field conditions. Over 2 successive years, we investigated the use of grafting under open-field fresh tomato production and found a serious limitation with current grafting techniques, which resulted in recurring rootstock shoot regrowth (“suckering”) from the rootstock cotyledons when left intact. Left unchecked, the regrowth of tomato rootstocks can envelop the experimental scions, which can impact the growth of field-grown tomatoes. In the Fall of 2007, the cultivars Multifort, Aloha, and TX-301 with ‘FL-47’ scions were grafted by a commercial propagator. These grafted plants were planted in a field experiment and after a time period, the number of rootstock suckers was counted and removed. This process was repeated over five time periods. In 2008, we grafted all of the plants below the rootstock cotyledons. During five different time periods spanning 57 d, bud regrowth from the rootstock occurred in all studied rootstocks in 2007. The difference in the 2 years was dramatic. In the first year, the number of plants with rootstock regrowth was as high as 84.6% in some of the plots for ‘Multifort’, 30.7% for ‘Aloha’, and 15.4% for ‘TX-301’. In the second year, with a different grafting technique, no regrowth from the rootstocks was observed. Even when the rootstock regrowth was removed in 2007, the rootstock sprout growth would reappear from the rootstock. The statistical interaction of the percentage of plants with rootstock regrowth for all recorded dates in 2007 was significant for ‘Multifort’ (Tukey-Fischer P ≤ 0.05) but not ‘Aloha’ or ‘TX-301’. Although the study also contained fumigation treatments, no interaction of soil treatments on root sprouting was observed. Since adopting this method, rootstock regrowth has not been observed in subsequent field experiments for the past 3 years.


2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Gil ◽  
Carlos Ricardo Bojacá Aldana ◽  
Eddie Schrevens

Potential crop models simulate the plant growth under nonlimiting biophysical conditions with no other factor than the climate to which the plants are exposed to. These models may fail to adequately represent the crop performance if they are not adapted to the local conditions. The particularities of Colombian tomato systems (greenhouse and open field) demand the recalibration of existing models to make a more realistic representation of those systems. Therefore, a locally calibrated crop model was proposed considering both production systems. To this purpose, four on-farm calibration experiments were carried out, two under greenhouse conditions with average temperatures of 17.4 and 17.9ºC in Santa Sofía (Boyacá) and two under open field conditions in Páramo and San Gil (Santander), with average temperatures of 20.6 and 24.0ºC, respectively. The crops were commercially managed according to the local practices. Plant data was collected through destructive measurements carried out on a fortnightly basis, while climate data were collected for the entire crop growth cycle. Independent calibration of the dry matter fractions allocated at the plant organs in function of thermal time resulted in an acceptable model performance. The calibration of the model under commercial conditions gave a better representation of the local systems but at the expense of accuracy since on-farm experiments cannot be controlled as those performed in research facilities.


HortScience ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 634-637 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.J. Díez ◽  
S. Roselló ◽  
F. Nuez ◽  
J. Costa ◽  
M.S. Catalá ◽  
...  

Seedlings of three tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) cultivars [`RDD', carrier of the Sw5 gene, which confers resistance to tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV); `Pitihué', tolerant to the virus; and the susceptible cultivar Rutgers] were placed at the four- to five-leaf stage in cages containing a population of viruliferous thrips (Frankliniella occidentalis Perg.), and remained there for 0, 7, or 15 days. Plants were subsequently transplanted either into the open field or in tunnels protected with a mesh of 14 × 10 threads/cm. Systemic symptoms and number of dead plants were recorded and enzymelinked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) were performed. `Rutgers' exhibited severe systemic symptoms regardless of treatment and a high number of plants died. The level of infected plants remained low when protective measures were applied to seedlings of `Pitihué' and acceptable yields were obtained. In open air cultivation, where seedling infection was severe, <20% of `RDD' plants became infected and high yields were obtained; protected cultivation did not reduce yield. Although the percentage of infected plants was higher when cultivated under mesh, the yield of all three cultivars was greater than in the open field. The environment created under mesh stimulated growth, neutralizing the effect of the infection.


2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olya Rysin ◽  
Frank J. Louws

Grafting could potentially become an important part of integrated pest management programs in vegetable crops in the United States due to increased pathogen densities, reliance on pathogen susceptible varieties, increased use of organic and high tunnel production systems, limited land or input resources, value-added benefits, and the loss of, or regulatory restrictions on, soil fumigants. Adoption of this technology imposes additional costs on growers due to significantly higher grafted transplant prices, but associated yield improvements are potentially more than sufficient to offset the higher transplant costs. Therefore, the economic impact of the technology adoption depends highly on the specific circumstances of each grower. In this study, we propose a decision tool for growers to facilitate grafting technology adoption. We demonstrate an application of the proposed tool to a scenario based on real-life data for the open-field production of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum). The results show that based on a 30% loss in marketable yields due to disease pressure in nongrafted systems, yield improvements in the grafted system with resistant rootstock were sufficient to offset higher transplant and harvesting costs and resulted in higher net revenues. Net revenue estimates were $7126/acre in the nongrafted system and $8374/acre in the grafted system. The sensitivity analysis resulted in positive net revenues in the grafted system ranging from $108 to $12,328 per acre. Estimated marketable yield required in the grafted system to breakeven with the nongrafted system was 73,880 or 19,980 lb/acre more than marketable yield in the nongrafted system.


HortScience ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (11) ◽  
pp. 1744-1755
Author(s):  
Ibukun T. Ayankojo ◽  
Kelly T. Morgan ◽  
Davie M. Kadyampakeni ◽  
Guodong D. Liu

Effective nutrient and irrigation management practices are critical for optimum growth and yield in open-field fresh-market tomato production. Although nutrient and irrigation management practices have been well-studied for tomato production in Florida, more studies of the current highly efficient production systems would be considered essential. Therefore, a two-season (Fall 2016 and Spring 2017) study was conducted in Immokalee, FL, to evaluate the effects of the nitrogen (N) rates under different irrigation regimes and to determine the optimum N requirement for open-field fresh-market tomato production. To evaluate productivity, the study investigated the effects of N rates and irrigation regimes on plant and root growth, yield, and production efficiency of fresh-market tomato. The study demonstrated that deficit irrigation (DI) targeting 66% daily evapotranspiration (ET) replacement significantly increased tomato root growth compared with full irrigation (FI) at 100% ET. Similarly, DI application increased tomato growth early in the season compared with FI. Therefore, irrigation applications may be adjusted downward from FI, especially early during a wet season, thereby potentially improving irrigation water use efficiency (iWUE) and reducing leaching potential of Florida sandy soils. However, total marketable yield significantly increased under FI compared with DI. This suggests that although DI may increase early plant growth, the application of DI throughout the season may result in yield reduction. Although N application rates had no significant effects on biomass production, tomato marketable yield with an application rate of 134 kg·ha−1 N was significantly lower compared with other N application rates (179, 224, and 269 kg·ha−1). It was also observed that there were no significant yield benefits with N application rates higher than 179 kg·ha−1. During the fall, iWUE was higher under DI (33.57 kg·m−3) than under FI (25.57 kg·m−3); however, iWUE was similar for both irrigation treatments during spring (FI = 14.04 kg·m−3; DI = 15.29 kg·m−3). The N recovery (REC-N) rate was highest with 134 kg·ha−1 N; however, REC-N was similar with 179, 224, and 269 kg·ha−1 N rates during both fall and spring. Therefore, these study results could suggest that DI could be beneficial to tomato production only when applied during early growth stages, but not throughout the growing season. Both yield and efficiency results indicated that the optimum N requirement for open-field fresh-market tomato production in Florida may not exceed 179 kg·ha−1 N.


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