Seedlings production of two tomato (Solanum licopersicum L.) cultivars under different environments and substrates

Abstract

The type of environment and substrates quality in seedlings production are essential for the production of productive plants under field conditions. In order to determine the best environment and substrate for seedlings production of two tomato cultivars (IPA 06 and Santamélia), two experiments, completely randomized and arranged in subdivided plots with five replicates, were conducted under the environmental conditions of Boa Vista, Roraima, Brazil. Treatments consisted of the association among five environments (A1 - greenhouse, A2 - Chromatinet ® 35% red, A3 - Chromatinet ® 50% red, A4 - Chromatinet ® 35% Silver and A5 - Chromatinet ® 50% Silver) and four substrates S1 - OrganAmazon®; S2 - OrganAmazon® + PureHumus®; S3 - OrganAmazon® + PureHumus® + soil + bovine manure, and S4- OrganAmazon® + PureHumus® + soil + manure + carbonized rice husk (CRH) on the following variables: number of leaves, plant height, stem diameter, dry shoot and root biomass, plant height/stem diameter ratio accordingly to colon & Dickson quality index of seedlings. Substrates made with the addition of PureHumus®, without presenting CRH (S2 and S3), which favored the increasing of all analyzed variables. In addition, greenhouse, especially when is associated to S2 substrate, had achieved the best environment for seedlings production of the two evaluated tomato cultivars. Photoconverter shading nets were not efficient in tomato seedlings production under climatic conditions of Boa Vista, Roraima, Brazil.

Keywords

• Horticulture
• photoconverter shading nets
• plant propagation
• plant establishment
• protected environment
• seedling production
• transplanting.