Title: Horticultural Crop Production Capabilities and Opportunities in the Tropics
Abstract: The tropics refers to that part of the earth that lies between 23°27' north and south latitudes.In the Western hemisphere, this includes all of Brazil north of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, half of Paraguay, a quarter of Chile, all of, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, and French Guyana in South America, as well as all of Central America south of Mazatlán and Tampico in Mexico, and the entire Caribbean south of Havana, Cuba. Temperature and daylengthThe main characteristic of this region is the uniformly moderate temperatures that prevail throughout the year.The average temperature is around 27C, with little variation.Indeed, the diurnal variation (10 to 15C) is usually greater than the annual variation (Monteith, 1977;Samson, 1986).This stability is accompanied by relatively uniform daylengths throughout the year-at the equator, the daylength is almost a constant 12 hr, while, at the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, the difference between the shortest and longest day is slightly less than 3 hrs (Webster and Wilson, 1980).Thus, temperature and daylength are conducive to-year-around plant growth.Under these conditions, the rate of plant growth is relatively fast, so that trees come into bearing earlier and the interval between planting and harvesting (e.g., in vegetables) is less than in subtropical or temperate regions.Similarly, the interval between bloom and maturity in fruits is shorter (Cassin et al., 1969).