Alleviation of Drought Stress in Tomato (Solanum Lycopersicon) Using Organic Mulch

Abstract

Despite the importance of tomato in human nutrition, occurrence
of drought stress constitutes a major bane to its bountiful
production. Therefore, this experiment was conducted to
determine the effectiveness of organic mulch in improving growth,
yield and quality of water stressed tomato. The experiment was
laid out in randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three
replications. The six treatments used in the experiment were
normal irrigation with zero mulch, drought stress with zero mulch
and drought stress with mulch at the rates of 10tons/ha, 15tons/ha,
20tons/ha and 25tons/ha. The organic mulch material used was
maize husk and the tomato variety tested was Platinum 107 F1.
Water deficit treatment was imposed at flowering stage (five weeks
after transplanting (5WAT)) by applying 50% field capacity as
irrigation water. Data were collected on plant height, number of
leaves per plant, number of branches per plant, number of flowers
per plant and mass of fruit yield per plant. Furthermore, leaf
proximate compositions (crude fat, crude protein, crude fibre, ash
content and dry matter) and leaf chlorophyll content were
determined. All the data collected were subjected to analysis of
variance (ANOVA) and significant means were separated using
least significant difference (LSD) at 5% probability level. Results
from this research work showed that stressed plants without mulch
application had a drastic reduction in all the measured
parameters. The plants subjected to drought and treated with
20tons/ha mulch showed higher plant height, number of branches
and yield as well as chlorophyll, fiber and ash content compared
to the plants treated with 10tons/ha, 15tons/ha and 25t/ha mulch.
It is, therefore, concluded that 20tons/ha mulch be used for
alleviating drought stress condition in Platinum 107 F1 tomato
variety in the study area when all the conditions in this research
are maintained.