Dormancy Breaking Studies of Dodder (Cuscuta spp.) was Problem in Greenhouse Tomato

Abstract

Tomatocultivation was in the first place with 619.877 tons in the glass greenhouse inthe Mediterranean region. Tomato production was ranked first with 437 tonswhile cucumber production ranked second with 48 tons in Kahramanmaras(Anonymous 2015a). Many problems such as diseases, weeds and pests areencountered in greenhouse tomato cultivation. One of the most important ofthese problems is the weeds. One of the foreign weeds, Dodder (Cuscuta spp.) is a parasite plant andthe most difficult to control. When you do not control with Dodder (Cuscuta spp.), economic loss occurs 100%in tomato yield and quality. It has been diagnosed that it is a dodder (Cuscuta campestris Yunck.) in tomatogrowing in the glass greenhouse of the Agriculture Faculties. Since the dodderseeds have dormancy, various attempts have been made to break this dormancy.Methods of breaking dormancy on dodder seeds; low temperature application wascarried out at 3.5°C for 80 days, in deep freezer at -2000C for 24hours, in pure water for 72 hours, kept at room temperature 260C for284 days and 1% Sulfuric acid (H2SO4) was applied to theseeds of the dodder for 3 minutes. From these applications dodder seedgermination was observed only in sulfuric acid applications.