BEHAVIOR IN DIFFERENT STORAGE CONDITIONS OF ROMANIAN TOMATO HYBRID ‘SIRIANA’ GRAFTED ON DIFFERENT ROOTSTOCKS

Abstract

Vegetable growers from Romania obtain the average tomato productions from grafted crops are with 25–50% higher compared to the productions from non-grafted crops. The grafted tomato production must be managed through a profitable capitalization in a fresh state on the local market. Post-harvest temperature and other factors influence the lifespan and quality of tomato fruit. Some researches were carried out on the influence of certain storage conditions on grafted solano-fruit vegetables (eggplant, tomato) in the Horting Institute. The objective of this research has been to establish the influence of rootstock on the behavior in different storage conditions of grafted hybrid ‘Siriana’ obtained in the year 2017 in a Venlo glasscovered greenhouse. The biological material was composed of cultivars of Lycopersicon genus: a scion, ‘Siriana F1’ hybrid and two rootstocks, ‘Buzău’ (Romanian selection) and ‘Emperador F1’ (interspecific Dutch hybrid). The tomatoes have been deposited for 20 days in bulk in plastic crates and stored in hemibiosis (temperature to 25°C) and physioanabiosis (temperature to 7°C and relative humidity to 60%) conditions. The rootstocks have influenced the total losses recorded on tomatoes during storage, did not significantly influence the quality of the fruit, influenced positively the firmness of the tomatoes but do not influence the firmness during the storage period under research conditions. The results obtained require the continuation, respectively the extension of the researches and on other grafted vegetable species and other storage conditions.