Search Results
Abstract
A comparison was made of ‘Ozarka’ and ‘Green Valley’ spinach (Spinacia oleracea L.) planted in early fall, and harvested in the fall and spring; and planted in late fall and harvested once in the spring. Fall-harvested spinach had no stems, low percentage petioles, and high percentage leaf blades with better green color and lower shear values, pH and titratable acidity as well as higher sensory evaluations than spring-harvested. Spring-harvested spinach from the late fall planting had a higher percentage of undersirable stems and petioles than spring-harvested spinach from the early fall planting.
Eight individual potatoes, exhibiting a wide range of quality characteristics, were cloned at the Texas A&M Vegetable Improvement Center, College Station, Tex., in order to produce a large number of slips for field trials. Leaf photosynthetic light response for six of these clonal selections was determined during a greenhouse experiment conducted at the Texas A&M Univ. Agricultural Research and Extension Center at Overton, Tex. Photosynthesis data were fit to a rectangular hyperbola in order to estimate light saturated leaf photosynthetic rate (Amax), quantum efficiency (QE), and dark respiration rate (Rd). Significant differences (P ≥ 0.05) were detected in all three of these parameter estimates among the six clonal selections. Parameter estimates ranged from 23.4 to 28.8 μmol (CO2) m-2·s-1, 0.056 to 0.071 mol (CO2)/mol (photons), and –0.9 to –2.0 μmol (CO2) m-2·s-1 for Amax, QE, and Rd, respectively. However, these differences were not clearly related to quality characteristics determined for these clones in field trials.