Espaçamentos e aplicação de regulador de crescimento sobre o desenvolvimento e produtividade do tomateiro de mesa

Abstract

Belonging to the Solanaceae family, the tomato plant may be cultivated in tropical regions and subtropical in all the world. Its consumption may be in natura or in form of juices. The tomato is the second vegetable crop more consumed in the world being surpassed only by potato. The cultivation of the tomato plant employs large contingents of manpower due to the cultural treatments that the culture needs. The utilization of growth regulators come to assist in the reduction of the numbers of thinning operations and possibilities a better spacial arrangement between the plants. Due the species having a great socioeconomic importance this job had the goal to evaluate the application of the growth regulator paclobutrazol (PBZ) and the planting space on the developing and growing of the table tomato. The experimental delineation utilized it was the randomized blocks in factorial schema 2x4, being two applications with and without paclobutrazol and four spacings between the plants 0,25, 0,30, 0,35 e 0,40 meters, thus corresponding to the populations of 40.000, 33.333, 28.751 and 25.000 plants per hectare, with four repetitions and fourteen plants per plot, the lines were spaced one meter from each other. The hybrid plant used it was the Ivety tomato from Sakata Seed Sudamerica. On the fiftieth day after the plants germination it was realized the application of the PBZ through sprinkling of 150 ml of solution in the concentration of 150 mg L-1 . The evaluated characters were: absolute growth rate, the first inflorescence height, plant height, stem diameter, chlorophyll content, number of flowers per plant, green and dry matter of shoots, pH, soluble solids, acidity, maturation index, texture, numbers and production of small, medium fruits; big and defective fruits and commercial production. As a result, it was found that with the application of the paclobutrazol the stem diameter and the chlorophyll content had the increasing of 8,52% and 5,34% respectively and decreased 5,44% of the plant height in relation to the plants that were not treated with PBZ. With the growth of the planting space of the tomato plant it was a increasing in the dry mass of the sprouts and in the stem diameter. With a lower planting density, the commercial production had an increasing of 3,63% in the total fruits production