SOME ASPECTS OF EARLINESS IN EGGPLANT

The comparison between two Italian cultivars of Solanum Melongena L., repeated for two years, has suggested various considerations as to how far earliness in this vegetable crop can be estimated.

The varieties examined were ‘Mostruosa di New York’ and ‘Grossissima di Firenze’, the productive behaviour of 30 individuals was analyzed for each.
All the flowers were labelled and on picking the single berries – which was done at commercial ripeness – the time that had elapsed between anthesis and ripening was calculated.
Then, dividing up the whole season of useful flowering (which went from 20 June to 10 August) into ten-day periods, variations in ripening time were examined in relation to the moment of flowering.

Another, simpler estimate of earliness was made by calculating the total weight of the berries that ripened during the successive months of production (from July to November).

The results indicated that the two genotypes behave very differently with regard to the character under consideration.
The MNY produces more berries and they begin to ripen earlier than those of the GF. Yet the ripening time of the MNY berries is always longer than that typical for the GF. The average difference between the two – initially very slight – becomes more accentuated as the season proceeds.

II Symposium on Timing of the Fieldproduction of Vegetable Crops

L. Quagliotti

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1975.52.25