Standardization of Nutrient Sources and Foliar Calcium Nutrition for Productivity Enhancement in Grafted Tomato

Abstract

Tomato is one of the most important vegetable crop and is highly demanding in case of fertilizer and water use. A field experiment was carried out during rabi season of 2023-24 at College of Agriculture, Vellayani, Thiruvananthapuram to standardize the nutrient sources for fertigation and to find out the effect of foliar nutrition of Ca for productivity enhancement in grafted tomato grown under polyethylene mulching. Experiment was laid out in split plot design with four replications. The main plot treatments were four nutrient sources(S) (100% NPK fertigation through water soluble fertilizer (WSF), 100% NPK fertigation through conventional fertilizer (CF), 50 % NPK (WSF) + 50 % NPK (CF) and 100% NPK through soil (CF)) and the three sub plot treatments were Ca fertilization (F) ; No Ca fertilization, foliar application of 0.5% Calcium Ammonium Nitrate (CAN) at 1 MAP and foliar application of 0.5 % CAN at 1 and 2 MAP. The results revealed that 100% NPK fertigation through WSF recorded taller plants with higher leaf area and dry matter production. The yield attributes viz., fruits per truss, fruit set percentage, average fruit weight, yield per plant and higher TSS were observed with 100% NPK fertigation through water soluble fertilizer. The results revealed that application of nutrients through 100 % WSF(S1) or 50% through WSF and 50 % through CF (S3) recorded 28.6 % and 18.8 % increase in fruit yield over soil application of conventional fertilizers. The results also revealed that foliar application of 0.5% CAN at 1 and 2 MAP had significant influence on growth, yield and quality of grafted tomato.