CSU student’s work boosts vegetable yields
CSU doctoral student’s results reveals the top performing vegetables for our region
Ask Tyler Mason what most growers want from their vegetable gardens, and his answer is simple: high yielding and delicious tasting. It doesn’t matter what they’re growing, it’s the quality that counts.
Mason, 31, is a doctoral student in the Specialty Crops Program at Colorado State University’s Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture. His research focuses on making it possible for farmers, specialty crop producers and home gardeners to grow bigger bushels of higherquality vegetables.
One of his primary research projects is with the Northern Organic Vegetable Improvement Collaborative. NOVIC works to find ways to meet the specific seed and plant breeding needs of organic farmers in the northern United States.
His time is spent in the research fields located at CSU’s Agricultural Research, Development and Education Center (ARDEC) north of Fort Collins. Nine acres are dedicated to certified organic vegetable research there.
The five vegetable types in the NOVIC variety trials include certified organic roasting and bell peppers, cabbages, sweet corn, tomatoes and winter squash. The vegetables in the trials have to meet the quality characteristics important to both organic growers and their customers such as large yields, great flavor, appealing appearance, early maturing, disease resistant and good for storing.
The results of these vegetable trials mean gardeners can choose the varieties that have the best chance for success in their gardens. For those wanting to grow the best sweet corn this summer, the top crop is actually called Nirvana. “That’s the best tasting sweet corn I’ve had in my life,” Mason said.
Nirvana had the same yield as the seven other sweet corn cultivars, but it surpassed the rest during the taste test.
Aristotle was the highest yielding sweet bell pepper, making it a reliable choice for Colorado growers. Mason said this Californiastyle bell pepper grew almost 4 pounds of peppers per plant.
“These are the most gorgeous peppers you’ve ever seen,” he said. “The plants are only 2 feet tall but loaded with thick-walled, meaty peppers.”
The red roasting pepper Carmen grew 3.5 pounds of peppers per plant and they tasted like “sweet pepper candy.”
Other high yielding and deli
cious tasting peppers include Escamillo, a yellow roasting pepper, and Ace, a standard red bell pepper. But Mason has a special affinity for the roasting pepper called Early Perfect Italian. Each plant produced more than 3 pounds of peppers, with at least 15 pods per plant, each about 6 to 8 inches long.
Although many of the tomatoes in the trial are from experimental lines, two commercially available tomatoes stood out: Mountain Merit and Crimson Sprinter.
In the winter squash category, Bush Delicata would be good for home gardens because plants won’t sprawl and they maintain their bushy shape, he said. The Delicata has good flavor and grew 5 pounds per plant. However, the largest amounts of winter squash came from the Delicata JS plants.
Ruby Perfection was the winner in the purple cabbage trial. Mason said the 2.4-pound heads grew on nearly maintenance-free plants. Other cabbage picks included Bartolo green cabbage and January King, a savoy type of cabbage with ornamental purple and green ruffled leaves.
Beyond the vegetable variety trials, Mason is screening peppers to find a way to objectively quantify pepper quality. Key quality characteristics include aroma, flavor, taste and overall preference. Flavor is especially difficult to quantify, he said.
Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry is used to measure the volatile compounds in pepper varieties as a contributor to aroma and its effect on flavor. Then consumers are asked for their feedback during pepper taste tests at farmers markets. The results could lead to breeding new bell pepper cultivars that have exceptional flavor and improved marketability.