Alternative Vegetable Crops and Production Methods for American Samoa

View the project final report

Commodities

• Vegetables: beans, cabbages, cucurbits, eggplant, greens (leafy), tomatoes

Practices

• Crop Production: grafting
• Education and Training: farmer to farmer, on-farm/ranch research
• Pest Management: integrated pest management, mulches - killed, soil solarization
• Production Systems: permaculture
• Soil Management: green manures, organic matter
• Sustainable Communities: new business opportunities, urban agriculture

This project is titled “Alternative Vegetable Crops and Production Methods for American Samoa.” American Samoa imports most of the vegetables sold here. Local vegetable production suffers because of a lack of identifying the types of vegetables and their varieties that will grow easily in our local conditions. Another need here is to evaluate production methods that will increase local vegetable production, such as vegetable grafting, use of low cost covers to reduce damage from heavy rains and winds, utilizing locally sourced organic material for soil amendment, such as coconut coir, dry litter piggery compost and fishmeal.

Through randomized complete block design trials, we will identify new crops and their varieties that are heat, disease and pest tolerant in American Samoa’s tropical conditions.

We will evaluate grafting of tomato onto eggplant rootstock and bell pepper onto chili pepper rootstock for production in bacterial wilt affected soils.

We will evaluate the effect of low cost rain covers, drip irrigation and bird netting (reduce damage from excessive rains, exclude fruit piercing moth and bird damage) on tomato yield compared to the traditional , non irrigated field production method.