Abstract

ENCISO GARAY¹, Cipriano Ramón; GONZALEZ BOGARIN², Nilda Beatriz  and  SANTACRUZ OVIEDO³, Victoria Rossmary. Tomato’s seedling production in floating system. Investig. Agrar. [online]. 2014, vol.16, n.2, pp.129-135. ISSN 2305-0683.

The experiment was carried out in the greenhouse of seedling production of the Centro Hortícola of the Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias, Universidad Nacional de Asunción, Paraguay, from September to October, 2011. The influence of the floating system and types of substrates on the growth of tomato seedlings (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill) was determined. The treatments were a combination of two seedlings production’s systems (floating and conventional) and two types of substrates (commercial and vermin-compost). Randomized complete blocks with a factorial arrange 2 x 2 was used, with five replications and 50 seedlings per experimental unit. The evaluated variables were: seedling height, root length, dry mass of the aerial part, root dry mass, number of secondary roots, stem diameter, leaf area and leaf area and survival rate in the field. Data were analyzed for variance and the means were compared by the Tukey test at 5% error probability. The substrates did not affect the evaluated variables, except for the number of secondary roots, where the commercial substrate was superior. The floating system was superior for all the variables evaluated, except for the sprouting in the field, which did not present differences. For leaf area the interaction was significant, where the combination of commercial substrate with the floating system produced the highest mean. These results show that the combination of floating system with vermin-compost is a viable alternative for the production of high quality tomato seedlings.

Keywords : Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.; quality seedling,; propagation,; substrates.

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