Growth and yield of pomato under the Syrian coastal mountains conditions

Abstract

Abstract. The world has always been striving to increase and intensify agricultural production, and there are several attempts to acheive that, such as grafting tomato on potato to obtain two crops from one plant. This investigation was conducted during 2020 in open field in Nahl village, Baniyas, Tartous Governorate, Syria. The vegetative and generative growth and yield have been studied for pomato (grafted tomato on potato) and compared to each tomato and potato separately. Tomato plants were significantly superior in plant height to pomato plants after 23 days of planting until the end of the experiment. On the other hand, there were significant differences between tomato plants and pomato plants in the leaf area after 23, 51 and 65 days of planting. Also, tomato plants significantly outperformed pomato plants in the number of flowers and fruits per plant and the tomato fruit set percent. Anyway, tomato plants were significantly superior in the average yield of tomato fruits per plant (1657 g.plant-1) to pomato plants (185 g.plant-1), while there were insignificant differences in the average yield of potato tubers per plant between pomato which failed to produce tubers and potato (48.25 g.plant-1). Studying the tomato fruit fresh weight showed a significant superiority of tomato plants (54.37 g.fruit-1) to pomato plants (35.97 g.fruit-1), while there were insignificant differences in the other physical (tomato fruit height, diameter and shape index) and chemical (tomato fruit content of total acids, total soluble solids and dry matter, %) properties.