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.