185px,

rubber tree ''Hevea brasiliensis'', the Pará rubber tree, ''sharinga'' tree, seringueira, or most commonly, rubber tree or rubber plant, is a flowering plant belonging to the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, originally native to the Amazon basin, but is now p ...

(''Hevea brasiliensis''), and a bucket of collected latex Tropical horticulture is a branch of horticulture that studies and cultivates plants in the tropics, i.e., the Equatorial climate, equatorial regions of the world. The field is sometimes known by the

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

"TropHort".

Overview

Tropical horticulture includes plants such as perennial woody plants (

arboriculture Arboriculture (, from ) is the cultivation, management, and study of individual trees, shrubs, vines, and other perennial woody plants. The science of arboriculture studies how these plants grow and respond to cultural practices and to their env ...

), ornamentals (

floriculture Floriculture (from ) is the study of the efficient production of the plants that produce showy, colorful flowers and foliage for human enjoyment in human environments. It is a commercially successful branch of horticulture and agriculture found ...

), vegetables (

olericulture Olericulture (from ) is the science of vegetable growing, dealing with the culture of non-woody (herbaceous) plants for food. Olericulture is the production of plants for use of the edible parts. Vegetable crops can be classified into nine major ...

), and fruits (

pomology Pomology (from Latin , "fruit", + , "study") is a branch of botany that studies fruits and their cultivation. Someone who researches and practices the science of pomology is called a pomologist. The term fruticulture (from Latin , "fruit", + , "c ...

) including grapes (

viticulture Viticulture (, "vine-growing"), viniculture (, "wine-growing"), or winegrowing is the cultivation and harvesting of grapes. It is a branch of the science of horticulture. While the native territory of ''Vitis vinifera'', the common grape vine ...

). The origin of many of these crops is not in the tropics but in temperate zones. Their adoption to tropical climatic conditions is an objective of

breeding Breeding is sexual reproduction that produces offspring, usually animals or plants. It can only occur between a male and a female animal or plant. Breeding may refer to: * Animal husbandry, through selected specimens such as dogs, horses, and rab ...

. Many important crops, however, are indigenous to the tropics. The latter embrace perennial crops such as

oil palm ''Elaeis'' () is a genus of palms, called oil palms, containing two species, native to Africa and the Americas. They are used in commercial agriculture in the production of palm oil. Description Mature palms are single-stemmed, and can gro ...

, vegetables including

okra Okra (, ), ''Abelmoschus esculentus'', known in some English-speaking countries as lady's fingers, is a flowering plant in the Malvaceae, mallow family native to East Africa. Cultivated in tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate regions aro ...

, field crops such as

rice Rice is a cereal grain and in its Domestication, domesticated form is the staple food of over half of the world's population, particularly in Asia and Africa. Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice)—or, much l ...

and

sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fib ...

, and particularly fruits including

pineapple The pineapple (''Ananas comosus'') is a Tropical vegetation, tropical plant with an edible fruit; it is the most economically significant plant in the family Bromeliaceae. The pineapple is indigenous to South America, where it has been culti ...

banana A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large treelike herbaceous flowering plants in the genus '' Musa''. In some countries, cooking bananas are called plantains, distinguishing the ...

papaya The papaya (, ), papaw, () or pawpaw () is the plant species ''Carica papaya'', one of the 21 accepted species in the genus '' Carica'' of the family Caricaceae, and also the name of its fruit. It was first domesticated in Mesoamerica, within ...

, and

mango A mango is an edible stone fruit produced by the tropical tree '' Mangifera indica''. It originated from the region between northwestern Myanmar, Bangladesh, and northeastern India. ''M. indica'' has been cultivated in South and Southeast As ...

. Since the tropics represent 36 percent of the Earth's surface and 20 percent of its land surface, the potential of tropical horticulture is huge. In contrast to

temperate In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (approximately 23.5° to 66.5° N/S of the Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ran ...

regions,

environmental Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism ...

conditions in the tropics are defined less by seasonal temperature fluctuations and more by seasonality of precipitation. Thus the

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in a region, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteoro ...

in the greater part of the tropics is characterized by distinct wet and dry seasons, although such variation is reduced in locations closer to the equator (±5° latitude). Temperature conditions in the tropics are affected by elevation, in which contrasting warmer and colder climate areas in the tropics can be differentiated, and highland areas in the tropics can consequently be more favourable for production of temperate plant species than are lowland areas.

Types of plants

Both

vascular Vascular can refer to: * blood vessels, the vascular system in animals * vascular tissue Vascular tissue is a complex transporting tissue, formed of more than one cell type, found in vascular plants. The primary components of vascular tissue ...

and non-vascular plants grow in tropical environments. Plants indigenous to the tropics are usually cold sensitive and adapted to receiving high levels of

solar radiation Sunlight is the portion of the electromagnetic radiation which is emitted by the Sun (i.e. solar radiation) and received by the Earth, in particular the visible light perceptible to the human eye as well as invisible infrared (typically p ...

. They are sensitive to small variations in photoperiod ("short day" plants), and can be adapted to extended drought, high precipitation and/or distinct wet and dry seasons. High night temperatures are a major hindrance to adopting temperate crops (e.g.,

tomato The tomato (, ), ''Solanum lycopersicum'', is a plant whose fruit is an edible Berry (botany), berry that is eaten as a vegetable. The tomato is a member of the nightshade family that includes tobacco, potato, and chili peppers. It originate ...

es) to the tropical lowlands. Furthermore, such conditions promote high

respiration Respiration may refer to: Biology * Cellular respiration, the process in which nutrients are converted into useful energy in a cell ** Anaerobic respiration, cellular respiration without oxygen ** Maintenance respiration, the amount of cellul ...

rates of plants, resulting in comparably lower net

photosynthesis Photosynthesis ( ) is a system of biological processes by which photosynthetic organisms, such as most plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, convert light energy, typically from sunlight, into the chemical energy necessary to fuel their metabo ...

rates.

References

External links

Purdue University
tropical horticulture lectures
AgNIC/INFOMINE at the University of California, Riverside
information about subtropical horticulture {{Horticulture and Gardening Horticulture Types of garden

Overview

Types of plants

See also

References

External links