Variety traits

Tomato fruit cracking

Solanum lycopersicum L.

A physiological disorder caused by the fruit epidermis's inability to expand during rapid internal tissue growth due to high turgor pressure. This leads to a loss of marketability, reduced shelf life, and increased phytosanitary risk due to pathogen entry.

In the reference 1 060 varieties crop Tomato, where this is mentioned in the description.

Damage is classified into radial cracking, which radiates from the pedicel to the blossom end, and concentric cracking, which forms circular lines around the pedicel attachment point. Large-fruited hybrids and thin-skinned varieties are characterized by increased susceptibility to this disorder.

In agronomic practice, resistance is assessed based on the proportion of marketable produce in a plot. The critical threshold for marketability for fruit with shallow damage is generally considered to be a crack length of up to 1.3 cm; deeper or multiple cracks render the produce unmarketable.

The development of cracks is triggered by instability in water management, including sudden fluctuations in soil moisture and irrigation following drought. Negative impacts are also caused by imbalanced mineral nutrition, specifically calcium deficiency and excess nitrogen, as well as intensive foliage removal, which disrupts transpiration.

General information about the subject — on the page Fruit cracking.

Sources8

Varieties of Tomato mentioned in the description

Selection based on the description text, not on official evaluation: these data are absent from registers. For specific variety details, please refer to its profile.