Produção de tomate tipo cocktail: tipos de muda, número de hastes e densidades de plantio

Abstract

Brazil is among the ten largest tomato producers in the world, with an annual production of approximately 4.7 million tons. Over the years, the demand for special tomatoes has increased. With that perspective, the work aimed to evaluate the productivity of the special cocktail type tomato through different types of seedlings and rush numbers in protected cultivation. The experiment was conducted in the municipality of Araguari–MG. The experimental design was completely randomized (DIC), with six replications and four treatments; T1 (Hybrid DRC Seminis, grafted with Maxforty rootstock, standard spacing with 4 stems (greenhouse standard), T2 (free-foot sapling, Belgian cover, dense spacing with 2 stems), T3 (open-foot sapling, Belgian cover, standard spacing, with 4 rushes), and T4 (conventional seedling, Belgian cover, dense spacing, with 2 rushes). The plots of treatments 1 and 3 were included by 20 plants in the plot, with the 8 central plants of the plot being considered useful portion, whereas in treatments 2 and 4 the useful portion are the 16 central plants, of the 40 total plants, considering the numbers of rushes, all treatments have 32 rushes in the useful portion. After harvesting the fruits, estimates were made of the number of fruits, total number of fruits, total weight of fruits, quantity of discarded fruits, weight of discarded fruits. Tukey’s test at a 5% significance level was applied to compare the means of all variables. The results demonstrated that treatment 3 had a higher number of clusters compared to treatment 4, which produced 20,498 fewer clusters per greenhouse. For the total number of fruits, treatment 2 outperformed treatment 4 by 21%. In the amount of fruits discarded, there was no significant difference between treatments. No weight of discarded fruits, treatments 1 had 450.60 kg more per greenhouse that treatment 4. Regarding total fruit weight, treatment 1 produced 38.03% more than treatment 4, representing an amount of 16,629.99 kg per greenhouse, guaranteed productivity. There findings indicate that the combination of grafted seedlings with four-stem training (T1) enhances total productivity and represents a promising strategy for commercial protected systems. The “mudão” seedling with two stems (T2) also showed good performance and may be a viable alternative for denser planting systems. Both strategies may contribute to more efficient space use and better exploitation of the crop’s productive potential. In contrast, the conventional seedling treatment (T4) had the lowest productivity among those evaluated.