Study On The Development Of Tomato In Western Hubei Areas And Varieties Screening

Mountain vegetables are the vegetables which grow under natural condition in altitudes from 800m-1800 m, with respect to the major plains, mountain vegetables with natural season, pollution-free advantages. Large-scale development of mountain vegetables can supply city’s vegetable “Autumn season shortage”, and also can bring considerable economic benefits for farmers in mountainous areas. Western Hubei mainly refers Enshi Tujia minority and Miao minority autonomous prefecture( Enshi) in the southwest, the arable land is 286 900 hm2, average elevation is 1 000 m, more than 73% in the alpine region, 29.4 % of the total area over 1200 m area, elevation 800m-1200 m of 43.6% of the total area of the second alpine areas, with the unique geographical and climatic advantages. In recent years, local farmers in the active guidance of the government to develop mountain vegetable cultivation, as of 2013, the state owns 58 000hm2 of mountain vegetable base, tomato is one of the major vegetable cultivation. However, the alpine tomato production area of 3333.3hm2 from 2011 up to 2014 of 4666.7hm2 with an steadily speed. But because of many factors, net-income increase into the bottleneck period. In order to explore the problems of alpine tomato, our subject went to the mountain towns of tomato production of professional, in order to offer feasible suggestions for a sustained and healthy development of alpine tomato. At the same time, compare tested multiple tomato varieties in different altitudes, and selected varieties of alpine tomato for production of different altitude. The major results of this research summarized as follows: 1 In Enshi, high mountain producing areas of tomato are mainly distributed in 800m- 1400 m. Although in different areas, the requirement of tomato commodity characters are also different, but some aspects of the requirement, such as high yield, disease resistance, high hardness, are the same. Through comprehensive comparison experiments of the economic benefits of tomato production in different altitude areas, the result was that the tomato producing area at an altitude of 1400 m had the best economic benefits whose ratio of output to input could up to 1.95. The main reason was the incidence of plant diseases and insect pests in area at an altitude of 1400 m was lighter than other tomato producing areas. Though the input cost per acre of tomato producing was higher than other vegetable varieties, the high yield and high price advantage reversed the adverse situation and derived people to plant more and promoted the development of tomato industry. However, it was worth noting that the matter farmers must plant tomato scientifically and avoided the continuous cropping. 2 There were four main problems of high mountain tomato producing in Enshi. Firstly,tomato varieties which have good commodity characters and strong disease resistance(especially late blight resistance) for farmers to select were few and the cost of the seeds were high. Secondly, early blight and late blight are seriously, leading to a large number of pesticides applied, at the same time, unscientific administration has been presence, which brings greater food safety hazards. Thirdly, production and labor costs of tomato is too high, this seriously affected the income of farmers. Fourthly, the market price of tomato have been fluctuation, the risk of planting is high. 3 In Enshi, average annual rainfall reaches 1 600mm-2 000 mm, so the humidity in the air is high, take shelter from rain cultivation can reduce air humidity and reduce the incidence of disease, thus keep tomato production stable, avoiding the devastating by extreme weather disasters. That is why take shelter from rain cultivation should be popularized. To the problem of mountain tomato varieties planting, our subject did three varieties compared test in three different altitude. At an altitude of 800 m area, the 28 combination of tomato were not superior than the local cultivars. At an altitude of 1450 m area, the testing of 9 new varieties,we selected two varieties which showed some advantages, but need to be further testing.