Abstract
Due to climate change, the occurrence of abnormal weather conditions has become more frequent, causing damage to vegetable crops grown in Korea. Hot pepper, Chinese cabbage and radish, the three most popular vegetables in Korea, are produced more in the field than in the greenhouse. It has been a trend that the time for field transplanting of seedlings is getting earlier and earlier as the spring temperatures keep rising. Seedlings transplanted too early in the spring take a longer time to resume the normal growth, because they are exposed to suboptimal temperature conditions. This study examined the influence of air temperature during seedling growth on the time required to reach the first fruit maturity and yield of hot pepper. Seedling plants of 'Super Manita' hot pepper was grown in temperatures $2.5^{\circ}C$ and $5.0^{\circ}C$ lower than the optimum temperature (determined by the average of temperatures for the past 5 years). Seedlings were transplanted into round plastic containers (30-cm diam., 45-cm height) and were placed in growth chambers in which the ambient temperature was controlled under natural sunlight. The growth of seedlings under lowered temperatures was reduced compared to the control. The mineral (K, Mg, P, N) concentrations in the leaf tissues were higher when plants were grown with the ambient temperature $2.5^{\circ}C$ lower than the optimum, regardless of changes in other growth parameters. Tissue calcium (Ca) concentration was the highest in the plants grown with optimum temperature. The carbohydrate to nitrogen (C/N) ratio, which was the highest (18.3) in the plants grown with optimum temperature, decreased concomitantly as the ambient temperature was lowered $2.5^{\circ}C$ and $5.0^{\circ}C$. The yield of the early harvested fruits was also reduced as the ambient temperature became lower. The first fruit harvest date for the plants grown with optimum temperature (June 27) was 13 days and 40 days, respectively, earlier than that in plants grown with $2.5^{\circ}C$ (July 10) and $5.0^{\circ}C$ (Aug 6) lower ambient temperatures. The fruit yield per plant for the optimum temperature (724 g) was the greatest compared to those grown with $2.5^{\circ}C$ (446 g) and $5.0^{\circ}C$ (236 g) lower temperatures. The result of this study suggests that the growers should be cautioned not to transplant their hot pepper seedlings too early into the field, since it may delay the time of first harvest eventually reducing total fruit yield.
