Abstract:
Tomato is one of the popular vegetables in Bangladesh. High temperature
(both day and night), humidity, rainfall and light intensity are the basic limiting
factors of the tomato production in summer season. During summer season tomato is
available in urban market at an exorbitant price. These tomatoes are coming from
exotic source mostly through unapproved channel. There is a great demand of tomato
in summer- rainy season but there is no good variety for this season. Recently BARI
has released some heat tolerant open pollinated and hybrid varieties with some
limitations liking hormone application and smaller fruit size. Considering the factors,
the experiment was under taken to evaluate the newly developed 13 heat tolerant
tomato hybrids under field condition with and without application of hormone during
summer-rainy season. The experiment was conducted at the Research Farm of
Olericulture division under Horticulture Research Centre of Bangladesh Agricultural
Research Institute (BARI) Joybebpur, Gazipur during the month of May 2004 to
August 2004. The experiment was laid out in a RCBD (factorial) with three
replications. Thirteen ( 13) hybrids of heat tolerant tomato lines and with and without
hormonal application were included in this experiment. The highest yield of fruit per
plant (587.50 g) was recorded from the line C12 and the lowest yield of fruit per plant
(221.50 g) was found from the line C3. Hormone application had positive effect on the
yield contributing characters and yield of hybrid tomato lines. The highest yield of
fruits per plant (444.72 g) was recorded from the hormone-applied line, which was 65
% higher than no-hormone. Heat tolerant hybrid tomato line C12 with the hormone
application resulted better yield contributing characters and produced highest yield of
fruit per plant (778g).
