TOMATOES FOR PROCESSING IN THE 90's: AGRICULTURAL FIELD PRACTICES

But in tomatoes for processing, the industry plays a special rôle in R&D and in its connection with tomato growers: is it not this Congress, including a scientific Symposium in the programme, the best example of that assertion? Most of the processing units have extension services for farmers and a few actually participate actively in R&D.

Let me remember an historical milestone. All of us know that the father of the modern processed vegetables was the french Nicolas Appert who manufactured the first canned vegetable near in the end of XVIII century - juice from boiling tomatoes packed inside Sèvres's ceramic bottles - the first vegetable's cannery also beeing founded by him in 1809. And is it not true that Mr. Appert himself built this plant near his vegetable field of four hectares that supplied the raw material?

As written before (PORTAS, 1982) the revision of literature on vegetables for processing can be an origin of misunderstanding in the interpretation of the horticultural knowledge. Horticultural scientists habitually come from teaching and research careers. However the processing industry's staff have a production - and management - oriented background and consequently is much-less "paper-oriented". How many times the publication of research results by companies, scientists, about new cultivars or agricultural techniques, has ocurred years after they had been familiar to growers? Hence literature analysis is not sufficient for a synthesis of the advancements of knowledge in these fields.

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