Commercialization of off season tomato production technologies

Tomato is an important cash crop among vegetable growers in the province of Tarlac. However, production in the area is concentrated during the dry season which causes market gluts and shortage during the rainy season. Moreover, typhoons makes production risky makes the supply of fresh tomatoes generally low resulting to price hikes. Thus, the seasonality of tomato production is a constraint. Hence, the introduction of grafted tomato technology developed by the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC) in Central Luzon showed that grafting of tomato to an eggplant variety EG203 tolerates flooding and showed considerable resistance to bacterial wilt.