Optimal Production
Using best management practices and taking plant population and spacing into consideration have a positive impact on yield.
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Pepper plant population per acre and plant spacing play a critical role on yields, insects and disease, and the effectiveness of pesticide applications. Photo by: Elaine Grassbaug© 2010
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An integrated crop management (ICM) program for vegetable crop production is essentially the use of best management practices for enhanced yields and efficient resource utilization. Cultural practices to consider for a pepper ICM program include the eight categories listed below.
- Crop Rotation: Frequently alter the habitat, type, and timing of food supply available to pests.
- Sanitation: Remove habitat and inoculum by destroying crop residues, using clean seed and transplants, and controlling weeds.
- Timely tillage and cultivation: Bury pests, reduce overwintering sites, uproot weeds; use rye strips for wind protection and earlier warming on light-textured soils.
- Crop and variety selection: Grow plants that can resist or tolerate expected pests; evaluate and identify successful practices, and incorporate into next year's crop plan.
- Crop timing: Plant or harvest to avoid known peaks in pest pressure; update field weed maps and use to make treatment decisions next season.
- Crop health: Optimize fertility and irrigation to enhance the crop's ability to cope with pests. Soil test and fertilize according to guidelines. Desired soil pH is 6.0-6.8. Apply 2/3 of fertilizer preplant. High phosphorus is important to early flowering and yield.
- Crop diversification: Plant several crops and/or several varieties to spread risk.
- Modify crop environment: Suppress specific pests or disorders using mulches, row covers, raised beds, optimal plant populations, and other techniques.
Population And Spacing
An important factor in optimal pepper production is the effect of plant population per acre and plant spacing on insect and disease incidence, effectiveness of pesticide applications, and yield. Research was recently conducted in the Great Lakes region that showed yields, in general, increased with reduced plant in-row spacing. This effect, however, may be cultivar dependent.
Commercial practices in the Great Lakes region vary from staggered twin rows on raised beds with bed centers 5 feet apart, to single rows 3 to 4 feet apart without raised beds. In-row spacing ranges from 12 to 18 inches. Total populations range from 8,000 to 25,000 plants per acre.
Hybrid pepper seed is expensive, particularly for processing peppers where profitability margins are relatively slim. Growers are trying to determine if plant populations can be adjusted to reduce hybrid seed costs, without significantly reducing yield, particularly if this is associated with better insect and disease control and thus fewer culls.
Plant spacing affects the microclimate in the plant canopy that, in turn, may influence the incidence and severity of a number of diseases as well as the attractiveness for egg laying by European corn borer. No data are available on the effect of plant density on the epidemiology of anthracnose on peppers. However, plant spacing and microclimate are known to affect the severity of anthracnose disease on other crops.
Results from a 2005 field study near Fremont, OH, indicated that single-row pepper plots with a 10,500 to 14,000 plants-per-acre equivalent provided the best red pepper yields and quality in general. First harvest red fruit yields from single-row plots were twice those of twin rows. Sunscald was not different for single versus twin. Single-row plots produced more fruit damaged by European corn borer and fruit with internal browning symptoms.
Bennett is a professor in the Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, The Ohio State University.
