Abstract:
The pot experiment was conducted at the Horticulture Farm of Sher-e-Bangla
Agricultural University, Dhaka during the period from November 2013 to April
2014 to study the mitigation of salt stress in tomato by exogenous application of
ascorbic acid. BARI Tomato 14 was used as planting material. The two factor
experiment was laid out in Randomized Completely Block Design with three
replications. The factors were: Factor A: Four levels of salinity such as, (i) S
0
: 0
dS/m, (ii) S
1
: 6 dS/m, (iii) S
2
: 8 dS/m, (iv) S
3
: 10 dS/m and Factor B: Three
concentration of ascorbic acid as mitigating agent of salt stress (i) A
0
: 0 mM AA,
(ii) A
1
: 0.5 mM AA, (iii) A
2
: 1 mM AA respectively. The total treatment
combination were 12, (3x4). At 80 DAT, the highest plant height (96.83 cm),
number of leaves per plant (34.6), number of flower per plant (53.5), weight of
individual fruit (80.4 g) and yield per pot (3.08 kg) were measured at control
(0dS/m) and lowest value was observed at highest salinity level (10 ds/m)
condition. The present result also showed that exogenous application of ascorbic
acid significantly increased the growth contributing characters and yield of tomato
in both saline and non-saline conditions. For treatment combination the tallest
plant height (101.5 cm), highest number of fruit per plant (42.7), highest weight of
individual fruit (81.1 g), yield per pot (3.12 kg) and yield per hectare (93.6 t) were
produced from S
0
A
2
which was very close to control (S
0
A
0
)
,
whereas the lowest
value from S
3
A
0
. Finally, this result suggests that exogenous application of
ascorbic acid can effectively mitigate the deleterious effect of salt stress in tomato
up to a certain limit.
