a study of growth and yield of " in-greenhouse produced tomato" cv. synda as affected by grafting, training and fruit thinning in hydroponic culture

growth traits, yield and fruit quality in ‘synda’ tomato were compared with those in tomatoes grafted onto either ‘king kong’ rootstock or onto their own rootstocks, (trained as single or double stem), and at two fruit thinning levels, of: no thinning or thinned to five fruits per truss. the data related to crop growth rate (cgr), relative growth rate (rgr), net assimilation rate (nar), leaf area index (lai), leaf area ratio (lar), leaf weight rate (lwr), specific leaf area (sla), fruit length and diameter, single fruit weight, ph, ta, vitamin c, fruit color indices (l*, a*, hue, chroma) and fruit yield harvested per plant were recorded. grafting and training had important and significant effects on the evaluated traits. plants grafted onto ‘king kong’ rootstock and double stem plants recorded the highest values in most traits. fruit yield increased about 27% in plants grafted onto ‘king kong’ rootstock and 42.5% in double stem plants. also crop growth rate increased in double stem plants and in plants grafted onto ‘king kong’ rootstock. dry matter allocation varied considerably, depending on the rootstocks and training method. the results indicated that fruits of plants grafted onto ‘king kong’ rootstock stored the highest proportion of plant total dry matter among all treatments (54.57%). according to the results, practical use of the grafting and training techniques could improve growth and yield of tomato in greenhouse system of crop production.