Abstract
Experiments were conducted on the fine-textured heavy soils of Western India from 1989 to 1991. These sought to study the effect of drip, mulches and irrigation levels on tomato yield. The treatments comprised various combinations of two irrigation methods namely, drip and surface flood, with and without two mulches of either black plastic of sugarcane trash. For drip, three irrigation levels viz. 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8 fractions of pan evaporation (PE) were tried. In surface flood, the recommended irrigation schedule, i.e. 8 cm depth of irrigation at 100 mm cumulative pan evaporation (CPE), was followed. This study revealed that drip plus sugarcane trash mulch (STM) scheduled at 0.4 PE level was the best combination, which gave the highest fruit yield of about 51 metric tonne · ha −1 with 44% water saving. The highest yield of 163 kg/ha/mm of water used was also maximum in this treatment. In areas of high weed intensity, drip at 0.4 PE along with plastic mulch (PM) could be adopted. This treatment resulted in 95% reduction in weed infestation, 53% higher yield and 44% saving in irrigation water when compared with the surface flood without mulch treatment.
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