Nitrogen Levels on Morphological and Yield Response of BARI Tomato-9

Received: 09.01.2015 Accepted: 15.01.2015 Published: 07.02.2015 An experiment was conducted to study the growth and yield response of tomato. Experiments consisted of four nitrogen levels viz. Control: No nitrogen, N1: 100 kg/ha, N2: 150kg/ha and N3: 200 kg/ha using Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications. Tallest plant (91.4 cm) was found from N2. Maximum number of leaves (97.8/plant), number of branches (10.7/plant), number of flowers (6.4/cluster), number of fruits (5.1/cluster), number of clusters (15.3/plant), fruit diameter (15.6 cm), individual fruit weight (73.1 g), yield (22.2 kg/plot and 61.4 t/ha) and Total Soluble Solid (TSS) (5.5%) were found from N2 while minimum from N0. It was observed that yield, growth parameters and yield contributing attributes are positively correlated with nitrogen levels except control; 150 kg/ha nitrogen was found the best compared to other nitrogen level used in this experiment for growth and yield of BARI tomato 9. *Contact author: jamal4@yahoo.com

An experiment was conducted to study the growth and yield response of tomato. Experiments consisted of four nitrogen levels viz. Control (22.2 kg/plot and 61.4

t/ha) and
Total Soluble Solid (TSS) (5.5%) were found from N2 while minimum from N0. It was observed that yield, growth parameters and yield contributing attributes are positively correlated with nitrogen levels except control; 150 kg/ha nitrogen was found the best compared to other nitrogen level used in this experiment for growth and yield of BARI tomato -9.

I. Introduction
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) belonging to Solanaceae family is a vegetable crop grown in Bangladesh during winter. Its food value is very rich because of higher contents of vitamins A, B and C including calcium and carotene (Bose and Som, 1990). It is much popular as salad in the raw state and is made into soups, juice, ketchup, pickles, sauces, conserved puree, paste, powder and other products (Ahmed et al., 1986;Thompson andKelly, 1983 andBose andSom, 1990). In Bangladesh, there is a great possibility of increasing tomato yield per unit area with proper use of fertilizer. Tomato requires large quantity of readily available fertilizer nutrient (Gupta and Shukla, 1997). To get one ton fresh fruit, plant need to absorb on average 2.5-3 kg N. 0.2-0.3 kg P, and 3-3.5 kg K (Hedge, 1997). In absence of other production constraints, nutrient uptake and yield are very closely related. Nitrogen has the positive response (Koul, 1997, Omer, 1998, Gasim, 2001Sawi, 1993) and essential for building up protoplasm and protein, which induce cell division and initial meristematic activity when applied in optimum quantity (Singh and Kumar, 1969). Nitrogen has largest effect on yield and quality of tomato (Xin et al. 1997). It also promotes vegetation growth, flower and fruit set of tomato (Bose and Som, 1990). It significantly increases the growth and yield of tomato (Banerjee et al. 1997). Nitrogen has a pronounced effect on growth and development of tomato. It promotes both vegetative and reproductive growth and impacts the characteristic deep green color of leaves. Nitrogen application resulted in greater values of plant height, leaf area, number of leaves and stem diameter of fodder maize, fresh and dry forage yield were also increased due to addition of nitrogen (Koul, 1997). Leaf to stem ratio was found also to be increased by nitrogen (Duncan, 1980) that the increase in leaf to stem ratio with nitrogen application is probably due to the increase in number of leaves and leaf area under nitrogen treatments, producing more and heavy leaves (Gasim, 2001). Application of N-fertilizer to the soil produces high tomato fruit yield and improves fruit quality (Adams et al., 1978) whereas excessive application leads to luxuriant development of vegetative parts of the plant at the expense of reproductive growth (Tisdale et al., 2003). It has been reported that tomato can grow on a variety of soils except worst soils such as gravelly soils and water-logged soils (Simons and Sobulo, 1974) but better yields were obtained from some soil types than others even with the same management practices and environmental conditions (Pettygrove et al., 1999). The specific dose of nitrogen may affect yield and storage behavior of tomato fruits. The experiment objective is to find out amount of nitrogen for optimum growth and higher yield of tomato per unit area of land. Plot size: The size of unit plot was 2 m х 1.8 m. The distance between the blocks was 1 m and that between plots was 50 cm.

II. Materials and Methods
Fertilizers and Manure: 10 tones cow dung, 150 kg TSP and 250 kg MP per hectare were applied in the experimental plot. Entire cow dung, TSP and ½ of MP was applied during final land preparation. Urea was applied according to the treatments. The entire urea and rest of MP were applied in three equal installments at 15, 30 and 50 days after transplanting in the field.
Transplantation and spacing: Healthy and uniformed sized 30 days old seedlings were taken separately from the seedbed and were transplanted in the experimental field on 28 November 2008 maintaining spacing of 60 cm and 50 cm between the rows and plants respectively.
Data collection: Data were collected on plant height, number of leaves, number of branches, number of cluster, number of flowers, number of fruits, fruit length, fruit diameter, individual fruit weight, yield/plot, yield/ha, and TSS content. A fruit was sliced into two halves horizontally with a sharp knife and a small quantity of juice from them was used to determine TSS in percentage with TSS meter.
Statistical analysis: Collected data were statistically analyzed using MSTAT-C statistical package programme and mean for all the treatments was calculated. Difference between treatments means were determined by Least Significance Difference (LSD) test at 5% level of significance (Gomez and Gomez, 1984).

III. Results and Discussion
Plant height: Plant height increased gradually with the advancement of time and continued up to 100% flowering. Tallest plant was found from N2 (150kg/ha) both at 50% flowering stage (82.3 cm) and 100% flowering stage (91.4 cm) while shortest from V4 (69.3 cm and 71.5 cm respectively) ( Figure 01). Moniruzzaman et al. (2009) found 161 Kg N/ha as the best for plant height of tomato that was agreed with Islam et al. (2003). Plant height was increased possibly due to the readily available nitrogen, which might have encouraged more vegetative growth and development. The height of tomato plants increased significantly with the increased levels of nitrogen. Addition of nitrogen fertilizer increased plant height (Sharma, 1973). The plant height, considered to be an important factor to judge the vigor was found increased to a significant level resulting in accumulation of more dry matter, N, P and K in the stems and leaves (Nanthakumar and Veeraragavathatham, 2001). Increase in plant height resulted in an increase in leaf number/plant (Akintoye, 1996). Increase in plant height with nitrogen fertilizer is due to the fact that nitrogen promotes plant growth, increases the number of internodes and length of the internodes which results in progressive increase in plant height (Gasim, 2001;Chandler, 1969;Turkhede and Rajendra, 1978;Koul, 1997). Nitrogen is necessary for photosynthesis, formation of chlorophyll and nucleic acids, its absence or deficiency causes stunted growth (Tisdale et al., 2003). This study was also indicated that the application of nitrogen fertilizer increase the plant height but above 150 kg/ha plant height become retarded.

Number of leaves and branches per plant:
Number of leaves/plant varied significantly among the nitrogen levels. Maximum number of leaves was found from N2 (97.8/plant) while minimum from N0 (82.8/plant). Increments in nitrogen rate increased the number of leaves in spinach but these increases were not statistically significant (Gulser, 2005). Karic et al. (2005)  increases the growth of tomato, which ensured the maximum number of branch than control. Nitrogen fertilization increased number of leaves per plant (El Noeman et al., 1990;Gasim, 2001). Nitrogen has a significant effect on number of branches/plant as it activates vegetative growth (Manchanda and Singh, 1988).

Number of clusters per plant, flowers and fruits per cluster:
There was a significant difference among the nitrogen levels in number of cluster/plant, flowers/cluster and fruits/cluster. Maximum number of clusters, flowers and fruits was found from N2 (15.3/plant, 6.4/cluster and 5.1/cluster respectively) while minimum from N0 (7.8/plant, 5.0/cluster and 3.4/cluster respectively) ( Figure 03). Number of flowers per plant and fruits per plant were increased with increase in N level (Arya et al., 1999;Aujla et al., 2007;Ahmed and Butt, 1999).

Fruit length and diameter:
Fruit length showed statistically significant variation and fruit diameter showed statistically identical among the varieties. However, longest fruit was found from N3 (9.0 cm) while shortest from N0 (6.1 cm) (Table 01). On the other hand, maximum fruit diameter was found from N2 (15.6 cm) while minimum from N0 (14.2 cm) (Table 01). Lal and Pundrik (1973) observed that an improvement in fruit size with increasing nitrogen. Individual fruit weight, yield per plot and yield per ha: Weight of individual fruit weight was significantly influenced by different levels of nitrogen. Maximum individual fruit weight, yield/plot and yield/ha was found from N2 (73.1 g, 22.3 kg and 61.4 t respectively) which was statistically identical with N3 while minimum from N0 (60.5 g, 14.7 kg and 41.0 t) (Table 01). This result showed that the yield of tomato increased gradually with the increased doses of nitrogen fertilizer. Many researchers confirmed that commercial yield depends to the N fertilizer of application rate. They were shown that fertilizer N levels affected not only quantity but also on quality of tomato fruit (De Pascale et al., 2006;Parisi et al., 2006).

IV. Conclusion
Yield and yield contributing parameters are positively correlated with nitrogen levels as found in this experiment with BARI tomato -9 except control treatment. Nitrogen applied at the rate of 150 kg/ha gave high yield. Growth parameters and yield contributing attributes of tomato also performed better with 150 kg/ha; whereas control treatments showed minimum results for yield and growth performance. 150 kg/ha would be beneficial for the farmers to obtain optimum growth and higher yield of BARI tomato -9.  (1999). Effect of N, P and K on tomato seed production. Sci. Hort., 6, 89-91.