| OCR Text |
Show Grow Tomatoes Without Seeds by Use of Chemicals; Fruits Have Solid Meat Tomatoes without seeds are being grown in the department of horticulture horti-culture at the University of Missouri Mis-souri by use of chemicals. Normally Nor-mally tomatoes require pollinization and fertilization to set fruit, but that also means that seeds will be formed. So the workers at Columbia Colum-bia pinch out the parts of the flower that produce the pollen, thus stopping stop-ping fertilization, and then seek another stimulus in the form of a growth-promoting substance, or hormone, hor-mone, to cause the fruit to set The result is that tomatoes develop de-velop normally, but instead of containing con-taining seeds and pulp, the tomatoes toma-toes are solid meat. The fruit is of normal size, but weighs more because be-cause it is solid, says the Kansas City Star. The hormone used is indoleacetic acid dissolved in lanum paste at the rate of one part acid to 500 parts paste. About three applications, applica-tions, put on a week or ten days apart, are required. The cost of the materials is negligible, neg-ligible, the greatest expense being the labor involved in emasculating the flowers and applying the hormone. hor-mone. In an attempt to cut down the labor involved, one group of tomatoes to-matoes was sprayed with a solution of the hormone mixed with water. Fair results were obtained, but not as good as where the hormone was applied by hand. The difference differ-ence is believed to be caused by the fact that the water evaporates quickly, leaving the hormone in crystals which are not absorbed by the plant. Further experiments are being conducted to find a material, such as an oil, that does not evaporate evapo-rate quickly and which will hold the hormone in an absorbable form for a greater length of time. Further experiments may show that it is possible to increase yields when seedless tomatoes are produced, pro-duced, since the fruit may be induced in-duced to set during summer months when hot, dry weather ujually renders ren-ders pollen ineffective. |
