Effect of Plant Growth Regulators, Micro-Nutrients and Date of Transplanting on Growth and Yield of Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.)

The field experiment was carried out during the Rabi sesaon 2018-19 at the Horticulture Reaearch Complex, Maharajpur, Department of Horticulture, J.N.K.V.V. Jabalpur (M.P.) to evaluate the effect of micronutrients and plant growth regulators on different dates of transplanting in tomato.Significant differences was found for plant height, number of branches per plant, days to first flowering, number of clusters per plant, fruit length, fruit diameter, average fruit weight and fruit yield per plant.The highest plant height was recorded at T 25 . The Treatment T45 was found better for Number of branches per plant and days to first flowering. The number of clusters per plant was noticed maximum in T14. The highest fruits yield per plant found in treatment T13. While the rest of the characters namely fruit length, fruit diameter and average fruit weight in treatment T 30.


INTRODUCTION
Tomato is botanically called Solanum lycopersicum. It is most popular crop all over the world for its nutritional value that's why it is called protective food. In India tomato is most versatile with wide usage in culinary tradition and widely used in soup, salad, pickles, ketchup, puree, sauce and in many other ways. Tomato is an important crop for value addition chain of processing. It comes under the warm season crop which requiers 21 o c to 24 o c for its growth and development. Day temperature of 28 o c and night temperature of 18 o c is ideal for its growth. Fruit set is affected at temperature higher than 35 o c and relative humidity of more than 90%.
Micro-nutrients play important role Boron and Zinc two important micronutrient which are highly required for plant nutrition. Foliar application of boron and zinc significantly increased the number of fruits per plant, yield and quality of fruits. Boron play key role on accumulation of photosynthates that has correlation with fruit weight (Shukha, 2011).
Boron involves in cell division, differentiation and maturation. Boron also promote seed germination, growth of pollen grains, development of pollen tube and fertilization process. Due to its defficiency growing point may die, stem weak and plant become dead. In tomato zinc play a vital role in enzyme reaction and involved in chloroplast development application of its maximize flower set, development, fruiting and also ensure even ripening. Difficiency causes dwarf leaves with show chlorosis, necrotic spots, bronzing and limiting the extraction of micronutrient from growing medium.
For increasing the profitable vagetable production plant growth regulator widely used. In this aspect two growth regulators namely salicylic acid and NAA included in the study. Salicylic acid has possitive effect on different aspects of plant life like plant growth and development, photosynthesis, evaporation, ion transmission and absorption, also causes to special changes in leaf anatomy and chloroplast structure (Sakhabutdinova et al., 2003) and salicylic acid also promote flowering and fruting under the cold stress. Naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) comes under the synthetic plant hormones which regulates the growth and development and also affect the biochemical and physiological process of plant and helps to promote plant growth by enhancing the cell division, cell elongation and cell differentiation which may initiate the development of plant organs. Flower cluster and whole plant spray of salicylic acid and NAA before the flowering, are highly beneficial. Therefore the present experiment was carried out with different dates of tranplanting along with above mention micronutrient and plant growth regulators with the following objectives to find out the effect of micronutrient, plant growth regulators and dates of transplanting on growth and fruit yield in tomato.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The results of the present investigation are presented in Table: 1.The analysis of variance showed the significant differences for all the characters studied. The maximum plant height (153.50 cm) was recorded in the treatment T 25 (D 2 +Salicylic acid (1.0mM)+Zinc (100 ppm)) followed by T 30 (151.23 cm) and T 15 (148.73 cm) as compare to other treatments. Similar result found by Ingle et al. (1993), Ahmed Abou El-Yazied (2011) and Choudhary et al. (2016). Among all the treatments, the minimum plant height 121.20 cm was noticed in the treatment T 31 (D 3 + control). The foliar spray of NAA(50 ppm)+ Zinc (100 ppm) with third date of transplanting threatment (T 45 ) significantly increase the number of branches per plant (10.77) followed by D 2 +NAA (50 ppm)+ Zinc (100 ppm) (9.17) and D 2 +NAA (25 ppm)+ Zinc (100 ppm) (8.40), same result denoted by Ingle et al. (1993). It showed that the foliar application of all three nutrients have a significant effect on the development of branches per plant in tomato. While lowest value was found in D 1 + control (5.77). The significant days to minimum first flowering was observed in T 45 (52 days) followed by T 40 (54 days).In respect to number of flower clusters maximum (25.43) noticed in treatment T 14 (D 1 +NAA (25ppm)+ Zinc (100 ppm)), T 30 (24.17) (D 2 +NAA (50 ppm)+ Zinc (100 ppm)) and T 26 (23.10) (D 2 +Salicylic acid (1.5mM)+Zinc (100 ppm)) as compare to control.
The highest fruit length was recorded in treatment T 30 (5.98 cm) followed by the treatment T 12 (5.78 cm) and T 9 (5.68), while the shortest fruit length was found in treatment T 1 (4.44 cm). Significant variation was recorded in fruit diameter due to combine effect of NAA + Boron. The significant highest 6.25, 6.10 and 5.93 cm fruit diameter were recorded under the treatments T 30 (D 2 +NAA (50 ppm)+Zinc (100 ppm)) and T 28 (D 2 +NAA (50 ppm)+ Boron (100 ppm)) and T 13 (D 1 +NAA(50 ppm)+ Boron (100 ppm)) respectively and which were at par with each other. Kiranmayi et al. (2017) reported that combine use of NAA + Boron gave the maximum fruit girth (2.98 cm). Whereas lowest fruit diameter was found in T 32 (4.27 cm).
The result showed that the highest average fruit weight was noticed in T 30 (88.86 g) followed by treatment T 28 (87.73 g) and T 15 (87.67 g). Same result reported by Mahadev V (2006) reported that the highest fruit weight per plant (1095.84 gm) and maximum number of fruits per plant (806.44) was obtained with the application of Boron 280 ppm + Zinc 0.50% +NAA 20ppm while the lowest average fruit weight was found in treatment T 31 (68.28 g) as control. The data presented in the table 2 revealed that all the treatments had significant differences in case of fruit yield per plant. The maximum fruit yield per plant was noticed in treatment T 13 (1.140 kg/plant), followed by T 30 (1.133 kg/plant) and T 28 (1.120 kg/plant), whereas lowest fruit yield was noticed in T 31 contol (0.490 kg/plant). These finding are in closed agreement with Merwad et al. (2016) reported that the highest yield (121kg/tree) was recorded in mango tree when plant is spread with Zn +NAA (0.2%+25ppm). It is evident from the finding that the combine use of NAA, Boron and Zinc significant increased the fruit yield per plant in tomato. Fruit yield /pl