How to influence vegetable brassica quality
Good nutrition is an essential pre-requisite for a high quality brassica crop.
By getting crop nutrition right, the grower brings forward harvest and consistently improves head, curd and leaf quality. This can have a significant, positive effect on marketable yield, produce grade, price and profitability. There are a wide range of quality standards depending on type, market and growth region.
Through crop nutrition practices the farmer is able to influence the external appearance of the brassica, including compactness, vegetable brassica size, weight, and color.
It is also important to increase brassica shelf life, by improving storage quality. This can be achieved by insuring a high dry matter content and less moisture loss.
The sugar content in brassicas defines the taste, while the promoting health compounds depends on the levels of calcium, Vitamin C and glucosinolates.
Deficiencies should always be checked by using leaf tissue analyses. While the brassica grower can adapt nutritional programmes to modify dry matter, sugars and glucosinolates within the harvested produce, these are more strongly influenced by other management choices – particularly cultivar selection. After harvesting, controlled temperature storage is essential to maintain good quality brassica produce.
