TOMATOES are one of the leading vegetable crops grown in Guyana. Production is year round and nearly the entire volume is marketed domestically. The realities of climate change, however, poses serious production challenges for open field production. This includes low yield and quality of produce and high post-harvest losses, leading to low incomes among smallholder tomato farmers.

The National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (NAREI) continue to find innovative ways to improve crop production while adapting to the vagaries of climate change. The Protected Agricultural Programme of the Soil Management and Farm Mechanisation Department of NAREI recently conducted trials to demonstrate how to increase tomato yield in shade-house cultivations.

It was observed that tomato plant roots became exposed above the soil when cultivated in shallow grow boxes. The challenge of mounding soil to cover exposed roots was recognised and a group of NAREI researchers developed a method to adapt the planting of tomato in shallow soil depth. Research Assistants, Denisia Whyte and Jonathan Melville, working under the stewardship of Research Scientist, David Fredericks, conducted research trials to compare two methods of planting tomato seedlings.

In the first method, the seedlings were planted in the traditional way with its root system in line with the main stem (Figure 1). In the second method, seedlings in cups were put to lie horizontally until the stem exhibited negative geotropism, that is, the main stem grows upwards forming 90° angle to the root system (Figure 2). All seedlings were then planted in the soil to a depth of 10 cm (four inches) and given the normal agronomic practices of irrigation, fertilizer application and pest and disease management.