Abstract:
Executive Summary
Globally salinity is unquestionably one of the major limitations hampering plant growth and
development. Saline area is expanding day by day throughout the world including
Bangladesh. Therefore, it is very urgent task to explore the technology of growing crops in
the saline prone area by using modern agricultural or crop management techniques. Keeping
in view the increasing salinity concerns and global importance of tomato crop, this study was
designed to explore the role of vermicompost in alleviating salt stress in tomato plant. A pot
experiment was conducted at the Agroforestry Field Laboratory in Sher-e-Bangla
Agricultural University, Dhaka, Bangladesh during the period of November 2022 to April
2023 following completely randomized design with three replications. Study comprises two
factors: four levels of vermicompost (V
0
= 0%, V
1
= 5%, V
2
= 10%, V
= 15% vermicompost
pot
-1
) and four levels of salinity (S
0
= 0 mM; S
1
= 50 mM; S
2
3
= 100 mM and S
= 150 mM
NaCl). Salt in pot soil decreased almost all the growth, physiological and yield parameters of
tested tomato variety in dose dependent manner. The yield of tomato was 1.358, 1.126,
0.801 and 0.536 kg pot
-1
under V
0
S
0
,
V
0
S
1
, V
0
S
2
and
V
0
S
treatment, respectively. The
maximum reduction of yield was observed in V
0
S
3
3
treatment which is 60.5% lowered in
contrast to control treatment. On the other hand addition of vermicompost in pot soil
increased growth and yield of tomato in non-saline condition. Interestingly, it also improved
most of the observed parameters of tomato including yield per pot under saline condition.
Under all stress level best performance of vermicompost was recorded at V
and V
. So, vermicompost might be used in saline prone area for alleviating salt stress in
tomato plant.
