EFFECT OF DIFFERENT MULCHES ON YELLOW LEAF CURL DISEASE OF TOMATO AND ITS IMPACT ON YIELD

Abstract

The present investigation was initiated to evaluate relative effectiveness of several mulches such as Rice straw, Blue, Transparent and Red Polyethylene sheets for the management of TYLCV in the field. In this experiment two popular tomato varieties of BARI Tomato-14 and BARI Tomato-16 were used. The experiment was set up at the field of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, during October 2016 to March 2017. TYLCV was prevalent between two tomato varieties in different treatments and the average TYLCV infection varied from 8.33 % to 66.67 % and 52.32 % to 74.09 % in disease incidence and severity, respectively. Maximum prevalence (Disease incidence 66.67 % and disease severity 74.09 %) was found in T (Control plot) and minimum prevalence (Disease incidence 8.33% and disease severity 52.32%) was observed on T 1 (Blue Polyethylene) in the same variety. Significant reduction was observed in case of different growth and yield contributing characters between two tomato varieties due to application of different mulches. The correlation and regression analysis revealed that % reduction of growth and yield contributing characters due to TYLCV infection had

3 pronounced effect on yield reduction of tomato and it was observed in all cases depending on varieties, treatments, whitefly population and weather. The results of the study suggested that, none of the treatments had significant effect against TYLCV infection. Although treatment T 3 (Blue Polyethylene) performed better as compared to other treatments on all over consideration. None of the varieties had impressive level of tolerance against TYLCV infection but BARI Tomato -14 performed better than BARI Tomato -16.