Efecto de número de tallos en la producción y calidad de jitomate cultivado en invernadero

The tomato is one of the most consumed vegetables in the world, its production, quality and size is affected by climatic conditions, water needs and management of number of stems. The objective of this work was to evaluate the tomato production and some quality variables, in three management conditions, depending on the number of stems. The work was carried out in a greenhouse of the Postgraduate School. It was transplanted on April 20, 2015 with tezontle as a substrate, under drip irrigation. The experiment consisted of three treatments (T1), with one (T1), two (T2) and three (T3) stems per plant. Samples were taken in the 1st, 5th and 10th clusters of the plant, to determine the yield, size, firmness, total soluble solids, titratable acidity, pH and amount of vitamin C. Yields of 6.55, 5.91 and 5.45 kg pl-1 were obtained for T1, T2 and T3. T1 was better with 69, 23, 8 and 1% of large, medium, small and very small size per plant. In the quality variables, total soluble solids and pH increased as the number of stems per plant increased compared to the firmness that decreased. Higher vitamin C content was found in the 10th cluster of T3. It was observed that increasing the number of stems increased the amount of fruit per plant, but the size and firmness decreased, therefore it is recommended to use T1 for export fruits and T2 for internal consumption.