Produção e qualidade de mini tomate em sistema orgânico com dois tipos de condução de hastes e poda apical

Abstract

Tomato is among the ten vegetable species with higher agronomic data published. However, despite the great importance of cultural practices on tomato yield, there is still lack of research on mini tomato cultivation. Therefore, the present study had the objective to evaluate the effect of top pruning and stem conduction of grafted mini tomato plants, cultivated in organic system, on yield and fruit quality. The experiment was set up in the municipality of Itatinga, São Paulo State, Brazil. The experimental design used was of completely randomized blocks, with four treatments, 16 replications and four plants per plot. Treatments were resultant from factorial 2×2, with two stem conduction types (two stems: main stem plus secondary stem conducted immediately under the first cluster of main stem, named as traditional conduction; or two secondary stems conducted from axillary buds of the two leaves immediately above the grafting point, named as “bottom stem conduction”) and two types of top pruning (three or five leaves between the top pruning and the last cluster). “Bottom stem conduction” was superior to traditional one for cluster number per plant (18.4 × 16.4), total (2.61 × 2.29 kg) and marketable (2.09 × 1.76 kg) production per plant, total (318 × 283) and marketable (226 × 188) fruit number per plant and utilization percentage (79.2 × 76.2%). Leaves number left between top pruning and the last cluster did not influence the characteristics evaluated. Soluble solids content was not affected by studied factors, with average of 7.05˚Brix. Based on the results obtained it is possible to conclude that the conduction of two “bottom” stems was superior to traditional conduction, with higher production of marketable fruits.