Masters Theses

Date of Award

6-1962

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Landscape Architecture

Major Professor

B. S. Pickett

Committee Members

H. D. Swingle, J. S. Alexander

Abstract

Pepper, Capsicum annuum, is grown generally throughout the United States and fairly extensively in the South, ranking in some sections as one of the important commercial vegetable crops. A rather remarkable increase in the production and use of peppers in the United States has taken place within the last 25 years. This increase was due in part to the discovery and publication of the fact that green peppers were rich in vitamin C (22).

In 1960, a report from the Tennessee Agricultural Extension Service indicated that the processed pepper crop is the most rapidly expanding contract crop In Tennessee. A total of 5,000 acres in 21 counties was contract grown for seven processors. Approximately 80% of this was grown in the eastern half of the state.

Investigations have shown that peppers may be responsive to application of nitrogen. According to Bird (2), the application of nitrogen before harvest time is justified by the fact that the pepper crop is harvested over a three-month period. Many workers have shown that nitrogen may affect sweet pepper plants adversely by inducing over-vegetative growth.

Many growers experience difficulty in raising peppers during certain years because of the loss of large percentage of the flowers and young fruits due to dropping. In other years, the flowering and fruit setting seem to be normal. Previous experimentation has shown that there is a direct relationship between this problem and climatic factors such as temperature, moisture and length of day.

This study is concerned with two phases of nitrogen nutrition of sweet pepper. The first phase dealt with the effect of various levels of nitrogen on production and leaf analysis on field-grown peppers. The second phase dealt with the influence of nitrogen on the number and set of blooms as well as the effect on leaf analysis of pepper plants grown in the greenhouse.

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