Physical weed control in processing tomatoes in Central Italy

Abstract

Tomato is a very important vegetable crop in Italy. Improving the means of production for processing organic tomatoes could help guarantee better profits for farmers and, at the same time, enhance environmental management and safeguard consumers’ health. Weed control, in particular within crop rows, is one of the main problems in organic farming, and thus also for the organic cultivation of tomato. The aim of this study was to develop innovative strategies and equipment for effective physical weed control in processing tomatoes. A conventional weed management system incorporating herbicides was compared with an alternative system relying exclusively on physical control during three growing seasons (2006–2008) on a farm located near Pisa, Italy. The crop was transplanted mechanically onto paired rows. The conventional strategy consisted of three different chemical treatments, two post-transplanting PTO-powered rotary hoe passes and several hand-weeding treatments on the paired rows. The alternative system included a stale seedbed technique (performed by a rolling harrow pass and one flaming treatment), two post-transplanting precision hoeing treatments and several hand-weeding treatments. All the machines for the alternative system were adjusted and set up for processing tomatoes transplanted in paired rows. Each physical treatment (mechanical and thermal) within the alternative system allowed an ‘instantaneous’ (just before/just after) weed control from 50 to 100%, while the alternative strategy as a whole achieved values of weed dry biomass at harvest ranging from 22 to 126 gm- 2. However, the alternative system required a total labor input that averaged 50% higher than the conventional strategy. The conventional system had on average more effective weed control than the alternative system, but both strategies controlled weeds effectively. Weed biomass at harvest averaged 36 and 68 gm- 2 for conventional and alternative strategies, respectively. On the other hand, the alternative system generally led to a significant increase in fresh crop yield (+13% average yield for the 3 years)

The influence of non-living mulch, mechanical and thermal treatments on weed population and yield of rainfed fresh-market tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.)

“…Different weed control strategies carried out on fresh market tomato in the three-year experiment (2006-2007-2008 The pre-transplant treatments included a stale seedbed technique carried out with the rolling harrow (Raffaelli et al, 2010(Raffaelli et al, , 2011) and a flaming machine (Raffaelli et al, 2010(Raffaelli et al, , 2011Peruzzi et al, 2007). The stale seedbed technique depletes weed seedbank by stimulating weed emergence leading to devitalisation by repeated mechanical/thermal treatments.…”

“…The rolling harrow has a steering handle system for precision weeding. The operative machine is modular, so it can be built with different working widths depending on the space between rows (Cloutier et al, 2007;Raffaelli et al, 2010Raffaelli et al, , 2011. In these trials, a 2 m wide rolling harrow (with an actual working width of 1.5 m) was used just for the stale seedbed technique.…”

“…The false seedbed technique can be carried out by means of various machines: chain harrows, flex-tine harrows, rotary hoes and the rolling harrow (Cloutier et al, 2007). Our machine was designed, developed and patented at the University of Pisa, Italy, and has been used with several vegetable crops for pre and post-planting weed control (Raffaelli et al, 2010(Raffaelli et al, , 2011.…”

“…If equipped with fingers and torsion weeders, inter-row machines can also perform the intra-row control of small weeds in many crops and in several growth stages (Van der Weide & Bleeker, 2011). Raffaelli et al (2011) successfully used three different machines as part of a weed management system in processing tomato. A precision hoe was implemented and adjusted in order to perform post-transplanting weed control between and within the crop paired-rows and in the presence of an irrigation drip line.…”

“…Flame weeding is used to control weeds in stale seedbed technique prior to crop emergence or planting (Cloutier et al, 2007;Peruzzi et al, 2007;Raffaelli et al, 2010Raffaelli et al, , 2011. It can also be used after crop emergence in crop rows in heat-tolerant crops (Ascard & Van der Weide, 2011).…”