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Farmer Timothy cultivates Solonaceous crops only. He is located in the flood plains

of Caroni. He usually plants his crops in late July to capitalize on the Christmas market. The

temperature around this time of year averages 30C with a Relative Humidity of 85%.

Farmer Timothy has observed that his last crop of Aristotle bell peppers was severely

infested by leaf miners and fusarium wilt. He intends to plant tomatoes for his production

season. As it relates to environmental factors affecting crop growth and performance;

1. Do you think producing a crop of tomatoes directly after bell pepper is a good or badidea and why?

2. Fully explain why the crop was affected by fusarium wilt and what steps can be takento avoid it reoccurrence.

3. What other problems can possibly occur due to farmer Timothys location and time ofplanting?

In order to answer these questions to the best of our groups potential;

1. The first phase allowed each group member to personally require and researchsolonaceous crops via the internet and also from Agricultural based books. This

process was necessary because it would have enabled everyone to have a better

understanding of the crop and in addition, to prepare ourselves for end of term

examinations. When everyone in the group would have done their homework, the

group later moved on to the second phase.

2. The second phase consist of reading the case study, comprehend and analyse thegiven data in order to present on what was correctly asked.

3. The third phase was applying questions to persons in the group to answer, based onwhat they would have read on the solonaceous crops.

4. The fourth phase was to review all of the answered questions with the gatheredinformation from primary and secondary sources and make final changes to the

answered questions.

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1. Do you think producing a crop of tomatoes directly after bell pepper is a good or badidea and why?

I believe that planting tomatoes after bell peppers is a bad idea because bell peppers

and tomatoes are of the same family type. This therefore means that they use the same

nutrients in the soil and if tomatoes are to be planted they will not grow to the best of

their ability due to the lack of the minerals. Due to the lost of minerals in the soil, crop

rotation must be practiced or even planting a crop of a different family type in order

for the replenishing or replacing of the minerals and nutrients back into the soil.

2. Fully explain why the crop was affected by fusarium wilt and what steps can be takento avoid its reoccurrence.

The crops were affected by fusarium wilt because Caroni is a flood plain therefore the

area is prone to flooding. However due to the constant water, plants become affected

with fusarium wilt which is caused by soil fungus. Veinlets in the leaves are clear andpetiole bends. The lower leaves begin to yellow first and the stem area usually in the

soil turns brown. Some steps that can be taken to avoid the reoccurrence of fusarium

wilt are to develop proper drainage systems such as to integrate the construction of

raising beds because they also facilitate drainage and if an infected plant is among the

other infected crops, is to get rid of the unhealthy crop and finally because of the soil

type where water is hard to drain, sand can be applied to the soil in order to make

drainage easier.

3. What other problems can possibly occur due to farmer Timothys location and time ofplanting?

Some other problems that can possible occur due to farmer Timothys location and

time of planting is the constant leaching of soil. Due to the Caronis flood plains a

constant amount of water enters farmer Timothys plantation cause the leaching of

nutrients and minerals. In addition to that, farmer Timothy chose to plant in the rainy

season when it is prone to hurricanes and other atmospheric weather systems.

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Flooding can also occur when rivers burst their banks and finally water erosion causes

the wash away of topsoil from beds.

The body is an accumulation of information based on environmental factors affecting

plant growth. However the questions that had to be answered further broke down the topic

and enabled us to interpret and analyse the questions making the understanding of the topic

easier. The answered questions were able to determine problems with solonaceous crops and

how to deal with them in any crisis either disease or natural disasters. This topic is also

beneficial because we now have an idea of what Agricultural Science examination questions.