Tomato producers, including the producers of the famous Valencian tomato from Perello, are forced to move part of their tomato production further inland in summer, to cooler areas. As Carlos Baixauli, who works at the center of agricultural experiences of the Cajamar Foundation in Paiporta, stated, the goal is no longer offering high quality products but ensuring the continuity of supply. A condition that is compromised when the summer reaches its highest temperatures in July and August.
To find a long-term answer to this problem, the center of the Cajamar Foundation is participating in the TomGEM project, an ambitious European project that seeks to find or develop new varieties of tomatoes that are resistant to heat and that can continue producing a normal crop in traditional areas where it is now increasingly more problematic to have profitable crops in summer, such as in Valencia's coastal districts.
This project is being developed with centers in France, UK, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Argentina, and Taiwan. The latter country is particularly interesting as it has a large genetic wealth of varieties acclimated to high tropical temperatures.
Paiporta is already working with 600 varieties of tomatoes from all sources, including commercial and wild varieties, to search for varieties that resist the heat better for possible future cross hybridization. To that end, the tomato varieties are subjected to stress in greenhouses, even using heating in summer so that the temperatures inside the greenhouses remain above 40 degrees throughout the day and are no lower than 30 degrees at night.
Santos Fernandez, president of the Cajamar Foundation, and Roberto Garcia Torrente, director of the Agricultural Food Business and Cooperative lender institution, presented these and other research on Paiporta's annual open day, which was attended this year by some 200 technicians and managers of cooperatives.
Source: lasprovincias.es