EFFECT OF DIFFERENT SOURCES OF NITROGEN ON GROWTH AND YIELD OF TOMATO (Solanum lycopersicum L.)

Abstract

An experiment was carried out at the SAU Farm of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka during the period from October 2019 to March 2020 to find out the impact of different sources of nitrogen fertilizer on growth and yield of tomato under field condition. The experiment comprised of different sources and levels of nitrogen fertilizer viz. Urea Super Granule (USG), Prilled Urea (PU) and Cowdung as organic sources with three replications. Different levels of nitrogen sources had significant effects on the plant height, number of branches plant -1 , fruit weight plant -1 , number of fruit clusters plant ,diameter of fruit, fruit weight plot -1 , yield, biological yield and harvest index of tomato crops. It was clearly found that, the maximum plant height was 96.64 cm observed in T 2 (100% N as USG) and the minimum was 77.27 cm found in the control treatment (T 0 ). Other growth and yield parameters were also significantly varied by different levels of nitrogenous fertilizer treatment. The maximum number of branches plant -1 (10.88), fruit weight plant (5.23 kg), number of fruit clusters plant -1 (18.66), fruit diameter (6.52 cm), fruit weight plot -1 (52.13 kg), yield (86.53 t ha -1 ) and biological yield (106.15 t ha ) were recorded in the T 2 (100% N as USG) treatment and the minimum number of branches plant -1 (6.44), fruit weight plant -1 (3.03 kg), number of fruits cluster plant -1 (8.33), fruit diameter (5.74 cm), fruit weight plot -1 (30.90 kg), yield (51.29 t ha -1 ) and biological yield (57.45 t ha -1 ) was found in the control treatment (T 0 ).The maximum harvest index of tomato (89.28 %) was recorded from T 0 which was statistically different from other treatments when compared among themselves. There was a significant crop yield development due to different nitrogen sources application over control. The overall result suggests that 100% Urea Super Granule (USG) at the rate 100 kg ha -1 proved to be the best with respect to fruit yield, quality, nutrient contents and uptake by tomato crop under the agro climate of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, but it is also assumed other sources of nitrogen fertilizer seemed to have more or less same positive pronounced effect on the above characters of the crop. -1 -1 -1