At last, a tomato variety that yields 34t/ha!

At last, “Atlas”, a very high-yielding tomato variety, is here!

Farmers who have tried this “variety for all seasons” for the first time have resolved to stick to it.

Roberto Carinan of Barangay Barangobong, Villasis, Pangasinan said he planted Atlas for the first time in the last cropping season of 2007 and it gave him 34 tons (34,000 kilograms) per hectare. Average farm gate price of the variety is P25 to P30 per kilogram.

The variety that he used to grow gave him an average of only 10 t/ha.

Atlas (official name: Condor Atlas F1) is a new tomato variety from Allied Botanical Corp. (ABC), the first fully Filipino privately-owned vegetable breeding company in the country. ABC has its own research and breeding station in Tayug, Pangasinan, situated 195 kilometers northeast of Manila.

A semi-determinate (semi-climbing), early-maturing, and high-yielding variety, Atlas F1, which is exclusively distributed by ABC, is highly resistant to bacterial wilt and tolerant to tomato yellow leaf curl virus.

It can be grown year-round and can produce fruits that weigh 50 to 55 grams, thus trellising is highly recommended to support the heavy fruits. Trellis is a support structure for climbing plants.

Carinan first tried Atlas after learning about it through an advertisement in an agricultural magazine.

He devoted 1.25 ha of his three-hectare farm to the new variety. He planted other hybrid tomatoes available in the market in the rest of his farm to compare the plant types’ performances.

Carinan noted that because of the immense weight of the Atlas fruits, all the trellises he used went down.

He also likened Atlas F1 to a cat, which is said to have nine lives.

After typhoons Lando and Nina hit northern Luzon late last year, all the other tomato varieties he planted were uprooted but Atlas F1 weathered the howlers. The plants even reached six feet while the other varieties either died or did not grow beyond four feet.

Moreover, despite the heavy rains, the Atlas F1 plants did not succumb to pests and diseases.

Likewise, notwithstanding the stress from the winds and rains, the new variety had a “second flash”, meaning the plants started flowering and bearing fruits again. The plants continuously flowered for four months after transplanting.

The other tomato varieties, by then, had been dead.

Carinan observed that malls preferred big tomato fruits while the people in Pangasinan were for medium-sized ones. Thus, he sells his Atlas tomato both to one of the country’s leading malls and in the Urdaneta City (Pangasinan) market, where he has a stall.

Break chicken broodiness to produce more eggs

When you observe broodiness in your native hens, don’t take the fowls’ behavior for granted.

Break the chickens’ broody behavior right away, so they will lay more eggs.

Breediness (naglilimlim in Filipino)  is an inherent characteristic in native hens that limit egg production. After laying a clutch of 10 to 12 eggs, native hens normally develop and show broody behavior, indicating readiness to incubate and hatch their eggs.

The  hens’ broody period extends to one month to one and a half months after hatching when they are allowed to take care of their chicks.

“During the broody  period, native hens do not lay eggs,” pointed out the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD). “Hence, the longer the broody period is, the fewer eggs are produced. This means a loss of income.”

Statistics show that native plus improved chickens constitute 54 percent of the country’s poultry population of approximately 135 million.

An adult native hen lays about 105 eggs a year.

PCARRD stressed that by adopting a simple indigenous technique of breaking broodiness, the native hens’ broody period can be shortened, thus increasing egg production.

To break breediness, PCARRD advised that hens should be bathed in cold water as soon as natural incubation is completed and the chicks are separated from the mother hens. After bathing, the hens should be kept in well-lighted pens and fed ad libitum (without limit or restraint) with high-protein poultry ration until the broody behavior is no longer observed.

Breaking the hen’s broody behavior is normally achieved in four to seven days, after which the hen is let loose in the range again to resume laying eggs.

“Hens subjected to this treatment lay the succeeding clutch of eggs in one to two weeks after the treatment or two to three weeks earlier than those not subjected to the treatment,” PCARRD concluded. — Rudy A. Fernandez