engleski

Tomato grafting influences the ripening period and yield components

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) grafting has received more attention in past years as a sustainable practice for mitigation of abiotic and biotic stresses. The aim of this experiment was to assess the length of the fruit development period, fruit characteristics at harvest and yield components in hydroponically grown grafted tomato. Cultivars Clarabella and Estatio were grown as nongrafted, self-grafted or grafted onto rootstock cultivars Arnold, Buffon, Emperador and Maxifort. The experiment was set up in a greenhouse during the spring-summer season by random block design with four replications. Cv. Estatio developed fruits 1.5-2 days earlier compared to cv. Clarabella. The rootstock influenced the ripening period at the first and the third flower of the fourth inflorescence. The weight of the fruits from the first four flowers was significantly influenced by the scion. Thus, the fruits of cv. Clarabella had 11-30% higher weight than those of cv. Estatio. Fruits of cv. Clarabella were significantly higher (5.69 cm), with wider columella (1.13 cm) but lower seed number (222.4 seeds/fruit) compared to cv. Estatio (5.51 cm ; 0.91 cm and 295.3 seeds/fruit, respectively). Cv. Estatio showed the lowest fruit diameter at nongrafted (6.49 cm) and self-grafted (5.22 cm) plants, while the highest fruits (7.25 cm) were found for self-grafted plants. Self-grafted plants of cv. Estatio had the higher seed number per fruit (334.9) compared to nongrafted cv. Estatio (185.8) or plants grafted onto rootstocks Buffon (238.8) and Maxifort (259). The shortest length of collumela (1.03 cm) was found for fruits from plants grafted onto rootstock Arnold compared to self-grafted (1.80 cm) and nongrafted (1.47 cm) plants of cv. Estatio or self-grafted cv. Clarabella (1.60 cm). Fruits of cv. Estatio were harvested earlier compared to those of cv. Clarabella. The components of total yield (fruit weight and yield) were higher for scion cv. Clarabella. The total yield was improved with grafting onto rootstocks Buffon (12.6 t/0.1 ha), Emperador (12.3 t/ 0.1 ha) and Maxifort (12.3 t/ 0.1 ha) compared to nongrafted or self-grafted scion cultivars (10.1 to 11.2 t/ 0.1 ha). Higher fruit weight was found for scions grafted onto rootstocks Buffon (206.6 g) and Emperador (207.0 g) compared to nongrafted cv. Clarabella (191.1 g) or nongrafted (171.1 g) and self-grafted (185.8 g) cv. Estatio. According to results, the grafting of scion cultivars onto specific rootstock can modify the length of period from flowering to harvest, change the fruit qualities and increase the total yield.

grafting ; rootstock ; fruit characteristics ; yield

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