INFLUENCE OF ZEOLITE DOSES ON GROWTH AND YIELD OF TOMATO VARIETIES

Abstract

An experiment was conducted at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka, Bangladesh during the period from October 2018 to March 2019 to study the influence of different zeolite doses on the growth and yield of tomato varieties. Five tomato varieties viz. Sweden 5 (V 1 ), Apple Netherland (V 2 ), TM 0.02 (V 3 ), Roma-VF (V 4 ), BARI Tomato-2 (V 5 ), and three levels of zeolite treatment, no zeolite application (T 0 ), 12.5 kg/ha (T 1 ), 18.5 kg/ha (T 2 ) had been used in this experiment. The experiment was outlined in randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. Significant variation was observed at different growth and yield parameters with different treatments. Among varieties, maximum plant height (138.8 cm), leaf number (77.9/plant), cluster number (7.5/plant), flower number (9.6/cluster), fruit number (42.1/plant), fruit yield (93.1 t/ha) was found from V 1 and minimum fruit yield (80.3 t/ha) was found from V 3 . In case of zeolite application maximum fruit number (39.6/plant), maximum fruit yield (88.8t/ha) was recorded in T 2 treatment (18.5 kg/ha). The highest fruit yield (95.5 t/ha) was found from combination V 1 T 2 and the lowest yield (78.4 t/ha) was found from combination V 3 T 0 . It can be concluded that Sweden 5 variety with 18.5 kg/ha zeolite application would be potential for better growth and yield of tomato.