Effect of Organic Fertilizer and Irrigation Intervals on the Yield and Quality of Cherry Tomato (Solanum lycopersicon var. cerasiforme)

Abstract

To investigate the effects of organic fertilizers and irrigation frequencies on yield and quality of cherry tomato an experiment was conducted using six fertilizer doses including control (no fertilizer), NPK fertilizer (urea at 300 kg, TSP 200 kg and MoP 250 kg), cow-dung at 5 t ha-1, cow-dung at 10 t ha-1, poultry manure at 5 t ha-1 and poultry manure at 10 t ha-1 with two levels of irrigation frequencies including alternate day irrigation and two day interval irrigation in a split plot design with three replications. Data on yield and quality attributes of cherry tomato like plant height, number of fruits per plant, fruit yield per plant (g), yield (t ha-1), TSS (%) and vitamin C contents (mg 100 g-1) were recorded. Results revealed that poultry manure had significant effects on the yield and quality of cherry tomato. Among the fertilizer treatments, poultry manure at 5 t ha-1 showed the best results on yield and quality of cherry tomato. On the other hand, cherry tomato showed best performance in relation to yield and quality when field was irrigated in one-day interval. It can be concluded that application of poultry litter at 5 t ha-1 in combination with one day interval result in highest yield and quality on cherry tomato.