I'm actually carrying out a trial to look at the responsive effect of tomato to a compound am testing and I'm a bit confused on the leaf count and the width of the leaf as these are some of the parameters I need to measure. Can anyone help? Which leaf should I be measuring for the width?
I will really appreciate your help.
Thanks
Aloesi
You have to pay atention that tomato leaves are compound, It has 5 to 7 or more leaflets. It is not important how many leaflets a leaf have, they all belong to the same leaf. Find nodes, there is a bud at the conection of leaf with stem, Older plants have leaves with more leaflets. According to Naomi Ori, number of leaflets can be affected by citokinin level. See: http://departments.agri.huji.ac.il/plantscience/people/Naomi_Ori/
Good luck in your work.
For tomato the leaf number is the number of "foliar floor" and the width is generally mesured for every leaflet (it's linked with the photosynthetic surface).
Good luck for your trials
Decide what you want to do with the data first. As already mentioned, tomato has compound leaves, which means that the individual leaflets are attached to the rachis or main axis which is attached to the stem with a petiole. There can be a lot of leaflets, but they are not called leaves.
The width is often considered to be the sum of the length of the longest leaflets on both sides of the rachis where the leaflets are attached to, or so to speak, the maximum span.
For leaf count, it can be helpful to decide what the minimum length is of the leaves you are interested in.
If you want to measure leaf area, you will have to measure leaves with a leaf area meter to be able to establish a relationship with leaf width and area.
Thank you all for your assistance.
Kees Weerheim, I'm grateful for your very clear response.
Cheers,
Aloesi
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