Novel Methods to Highlight Relative Differences Between Cultivars in a Variety Trial: An Example Using High Tunnel Tomatoes, Poster Board #322

Throughout cool regions of the United States, tomatoes are an important commercial crop grown in high tunnels. This work evaluated 11 indeterminate beefsteak tomato cultivars for growth and performance in 2011 in Durham, NH. Using a randomized complete-block design with four replicates, tomatoes were transplanted into black plastic mulch and trained to a single leader, following standard commercial fertilization and irrigation recommendations. Fruit quality, weight, number, and physiological disorders, were recorded at each harvest date, and qualitative observations such as growth habit were noted. Two informal blind taste tests were conducted to provide qualitative assessments of flavor and visual characteristics. Significant differences were observed by variety (P < 0.0001) for yield per plant, days to maturity, total number of fruit produced, fruit size, and percentage of marketable fruit. ‘Geronimo’, ‘Big Beef’, and ‘Arbason’ were the highest producers of marketable fruit (mean lbs per plant: 25, 23, 21) while ‘Jet Star’, ‘Big Beef’, and ‘Geronimo’ had the highest percentage of marketable fruit per plant (mean: 90%, 87%, 87%). The cultivars earliest to mature were ‘Conestoga’, ‘Brandywine’, and ‘Massada’ (mean: 64, 66, 67 days) while ‘Cobra’ was the latest (mean: 74 days). Taste tests suggested consistent appeal for ‘Brandywine’, ‘Jet Star’, and ‘Big Beef’, while ‘Geronimo’ was consistently ranked unfavorably. These results, along with qualitative observations, suggest a high degree of tradeoff in commercially available cultivars, making universal recommendations difficult. Growers are adept at making multi-factor production decisions and agronomic research can be made both informative and open-ended to support their aptitude for complex reasoning. To this end, results have been reported using different approaches including “word clouds” and radar plots in an effort to capture the range of phenotypic variation between cultivars so individualized decisions can be made by the end users. Typically, variety trial results are presented as photographs, tables, and anecdotal information. We present the results of our high tunnel tomato cultivar trial using novel graphical formats that permit communication of the relative strengths and weaknesses of cultivars to agricultural producers.