2023 Volume 58 Issue 1 Pages 1-12
Although the demand for cherry tomatoes is increasing, the time required to perform each cherry tomato cultivation task should be reduced as it requires a longer than large-sized tomatoes. Recently, summer-autumn-harvest cherry tomatoes using non-training cultivation with a net in an open field （sauvage cultivation）, which is a labor-saving cultivation, have been developed and promoted. Sauvage cultivation should reduce working hours （excluding harvesting time） and costs compared with conventional cultivation, although removing plants （residues） from nets after cultivation is laborious. Biodegradable nets, when buried in soil, can be degraded with plants as organic matter and become part of the soil. Therefore, the need for troublesome removal from plants for disposal can be eliminated, improving work efficiency. This study evaluates the dismantling process in sauvage cultivation when using biodegradable nets in terms of work time and action categories. Furthermore, collecting basic data on degradability of the biodegradable net evaluated the usefulness of the nets. As a result, the use of biodegradable nets reduced the dismantling time. Therefore, biodegradable nets may apply to sauvage cultivation for labor-saving and light work on dismantling because biodegradable nets can be buried and disposed of with plants.
