In mid-May, the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) Gulf Coast Research and Education Center hosted a tomato field day to showcase research being conducted at the facility.
The event was well attended, filling up several wagon loads of people who made their way through six field stops that focused on nematodes, tomato breeding, fertilizer recommendations, disease management and weed control.
Photos by Frank Giles
Johan Desaeger, UF/IFAS nematologist, discussed his research on nematode management. Fumigation and other nematicides remain an important means of managing nematodes in crops. He said planting cover crops in the fallow period is becoming a more popular practice. Sunn hemp and sorghum-sudangrass are good cover crops for tomatoes. Desaeger cautioned about the guava root-knot nematode, which is a newer species in the area. Existing disease-resistant tomato varieties do not appear to have good resistance to this nematode.
Jessica Chitwood-Brown, UF/IFAS tomato breeder, hosted two stops highlighting new varieties in development. One stop featured work to develop bacterial spot-resistant lines and hybrids. She said she’s excited about the Bs5 gene, which has been shown to produce good resistance to bacterial spot when edited with CRISPR technology. As breeding perfects the must-haves like yield and quality, Bs5 hybrid availability could only be a matter of years away for growers.
Shinsuke Agehara, UF/IFAS horticulture associate professor, hosted a tour stop on work to update fertilizer recommendations for tomato, especially for nitrogen and phosphorus. This is part of a larger research effort to update fertilizer recommendations for multiple crops to serve as guidance for Florida’s best management practices program.
Gary Vallad, UF/IFAS professor of plant pathology, showed an elaborate experiment aimed at tracking the movement of bacterial spot disease in fields. He and his team have created vacuums that suck up the air in and around a tomato plot to see how far disease spores can move. He said the idea is to gain a better understanding of what causes the disease to spread and how far it will go. For example, when growers spray their tomato crops with booms under pressure, is that moving the disease to new locations? This research could be applied to other diseases as well.
The final tour stop featured weeds and the work of Nathan Boyd, UF/IFAS weed scientist. Attendees were shown fumigation treatment plots that have had the same treatments for the past seven years. Boyd said the most cost-effective treatment in this experiment has been Pic-Clor 60 plus KPAM.
By Frank Giles