Response of various plant growth regulators on growth, yield and yield attributing traits of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L) cv. Heemsohna under protected structure

Abstract

Tomato is universally treated as “Protective food” because of powerful antioxidant associate with lower risk of cancers, heart and related disease. Plant growth regulators play an important role in increasing the growth, yield as well as quality of the produce if applied in suitable forms and at appropriate concentrations. Therefore, an experiment was carried out during 2020–21 in polyhouse of School of Agriculture Science and Technology, RIMT University, Mandi Gobindgarh, Punjab, India to evaluate the response of various plant growth regulators on growth, yield and yield attributing traits of tomato cv. Heemsohna under protected structure. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Complete Block Design with ten treatments and three replications. The treatment combinations are of GA3 (25, 50 and 75 ppm), IAA (25, 50 and 75 ppm) and NAA (25, 50 and 75 ppm). The results highlighted that, the growth, flowering and fruiting parameters like plant height (181.14 cm), number of branches per plant (22.56), inter-nodal distance (11.06), stem diameter (3.07 cm), leaf length (15.40 cm), leaf width (11.99 cm), days of first flowering (46.78 days), number of cluster per plant (11.11), number of flowers per plant (30.11), number of fruits per plant (3.48), weight of three fruit (194.82 g), yield (3.48 kg/plant and 31.35 kg/plot), polar diameter (4.80 cm) and equatorial diameter (5.23 cm) were significantly increased by the foliar application of GA3 @ 50 ppm. Thus, on the basis of present study it may be concluded that the foliar application of GA3 @ 50 ppm has been proved best for growth, flowering, fruiting and yield of tomato under protected structure.