Influence of covering treatment on the incidence of frost injury in chinese cabbage during winter season

The average temperatures for year and winter season have been risen by 0.7℃ and 1.4℃, respectively, during the last 30 years. Recently abnormal climate phenomena occurred frequently results in severe loss of vegetable crops grown in Korea. Specially, Chinese cabbages grown in the southern area of Korea are often significantly affected by sudden cold waves during winter season before harvest. This experiment was conducted to find out a potential role of covering materials on the protection of frost damage of ‘Bularm’ chinese cabbage in the winter season. The lowest temperature was ?15.8℃ in non-covering, -8.1℃ in the PE film covering and ?4.6℃ in the non-woven fabric covering with PE film, respectively. The cumulative times below 4.0℃ were 145.5 hours for the non-covering treatment, 94 hours in the PE film covering and 14.5 hours in the non-woven fabric covering with PE film, respectively. The symptoms of frost damage were severe at non-covering chinese cabbages compared to polyethylene film (PE) non-woven fabric with PE covering ones. Microscopic studies showed the normal anatomical structure of palisade and spongy tissue of cabbage leaves covered with non-woven fabric with PE film. Leaf cells, however, were slightly damaged in cabbages covered with PE film alone, and both palisade and spongy cells were were completely collapsed in uncovered cabbages. The result of this study suggests that chinese cabbages is required to be covered with non-woven fabric with PE film to minimize the frost damage by sudden cold wave below -7℃.