The objective of this work was to determine the effect of training and of two staking systems for plants on yield potential and its components of tomato hybrids of the Salad Extended Shelf Life and Santa Cruz types of indeterminate growth, aiming in natura market. In this experiment we adopted the randomized block design with the treatments in a 5x2 factorial scheme, and four replications, evaluating three Salad Extended Shelf Life hybrids ('Alambra', 'Paron' and 'Forty') and two Santa Cruz hybrids ('Débora Pto' and 'Ellus') in two plant training systems. The experiments were carried out in Itatiba, São Paulo state, Brazil, from July 2007 to January 2008. All plants of each plot were considered and were evaluated, for both segments, total yield, marketable yield, production per plant, average fruit weight, total number of fruits, number of marketable fruits, number of marketable fruits classified into '3A', '2A' and '1A' classes, number of fruits with blotchy appearance and open locules with exposed seed. There was no interaction between cultivar and plant training system for most characteristics evaluated, except for total number of fruits, number of marketable fruits and number of marketable fruit of '2A'class. The training system with one stem per plant and supported by polypropylene ribbon increased average fruit weight and the number of marketable fruits of '3A' class and reduced the number of marketable fruits of '1A' class, without reducing the total and marketable yields compared to the traditional training method (bamboo stakes with two stems per plant).
Solanum lycopersicum; staking; cultural management; varietal segmentation
