Effect of Household Solid Waste Compost on Growth and Yield of Tomato (Lycopersicum esculentum L.) in Agroforestry System

Abstract

Improvement of environment and soil fertility through utilization of compost produced from household organic solid waste is effective and agroforestry system is an effective technology to increase the production per unit of area. For this reason, a research was conducted to evaluate the performance of household solid waste compost on growth and yield performance of tomato in agroforestry system at the experimental field of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka during the period from November 2020 to June 2021. The experiment was conducted with five treatments viz. T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5 as recommended dose of fertilizer, 10 ton/ha, 15 ton/ha, 20 ton/ha and 25 ton/ha household solid waste compost, respectively which were arranged by Randomized Completely Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. Moringa tree was used as tree species and BARI Tomato-2 was planted under moringa tree. The household solid waste compost showed effects on growth and yield performance of tomato compared to recommended dose. T3, T4 and T5 showed significant effects on 80% flowering (DAT), fresh weight per plant, dry weight per plant, fruit number per plant, weight of individual fruit, fruit weight per plant, fruit yield per hectare compared T1 (RDF) but T2 (10 ton/ha) decreased significantly compared to RDF (T1). Among those three treatments (T3, T4 and T5), T5 showed significant effects on fresh and dry weight of tomato plants, fruit number per plant, weight per fruit, total fruit weight per plant and fruit yield per hectare than T3 and T4. So, T5 (25 ton/ha) showed optimum yield of tomato in agroforestry system compared to recommended dose and other doses.