In order to cultivate tomato of the first fruit cluster harvest a lot of nursery plants were required as much as 75,000 to 100,000 plants per hectare in green house in Korea. Therefore, it needs too many expenses to buy tomato seeds. This study was carried out to confirm the possibility of alternative use of the tomato cuttings instead of tomato seedlings of two varieties. The cutting materials of each node were taken from the suitable transplanting tomato seedling nursery plants in commercial green house. Four to five nodes of seedling nursery plants were cut into plug tray with 50 to 128 cells, 23 to 80 mL/cell in cell capacity. At 5 days after cutting rooting was initiated and the rooted plants could be transplanted as cutting nursery plants. The cutting nursery plants of Rockusanmaru and Momotarou-yoku varieties were planted to the perlite media in hydroponics bench in green house with 111,110 plants/ha (90 cm × 10 cm) in planting density at 8 May 2002. The matured fruits were harvested from 9 July through 26 July 2002. The number of harvested fruits was 2.9 to 3.3 for the two varieties. The fruit weight was 138 to 153 g for `Rockusanmaru', and 127 to 146 g for `Momotarou-yoku'. The cutting nursery plants of `Rockusanmaru' showed higher fruit yields as much as 51.5 tons/ha than that of seedlings as 40.3 tons/ha. There was a similar result in `Momotarou-yoku'. The duration from cutting to harvest of first fruit cluster was required 89 to 105 days, as well as 63 to 79 days from field planting to harvest. In conclusion the cultivation with tomato cutting nursery plants was considered as better effects in shorter periods in nursery raising and higher yields in comparison to conventional cultivation with seedlings.
APPLICATION OF AUTOMATION PLANTING SYSTEM AT GREEN HOUSE IN IMPROVING PLANT QUALITY
