EFFECTS OF TRANSPLANTING DATE AND SALICYLIC ACID ON MORPHOLOGY AND YIELD OF TOMATO

Abstract

The experiment was conducted in the farm and Laboratory of Agricultural Botany Department, Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University (SAU), Dhaka, Bangladesh, during the period of 10 November 2014 to 15 March 2015 to find out the role of exogenous foliar application of salicylic acid (SA) on the changes of morphology and fruit yield of tomato at different time of transplanting. In this experiment, variety BARI tomato 15 was used as a planting material and the treatments consisted of three different times of transplanting: T1=First transplanting time, (10December 2014),T2=Second transplanting time, (20 December 2014), T3 = Third transplanting time ,(30 December 2014); and four different doses of SA viz. C = 0 mM SA, SA1 = 0.1mM SA, SA2 = 0.2 mM SA and SA3 = 0.3 mM SA. Thus, there were 12 treatment combinations. The experiment was laid out in two factors Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with four replications. 48 pots were used to conduct this experiment. Salicylic acid was applied to the plant according to the treatment. The Salicylic acid were sprayed exogenously by a hand sprayer in the morning at 20, 30, and 40 days after transplanting (DAT). Data were recorded on various parameters and statistically analyzed. Most of the results of this experiment showed difference to treatments. The transplanting time (T1) significantly changed morphological characters such as plant height, number of leaves per plant, number of branches per plant; and yield contributing characters like number of flower clusters per plant, number of flowers per plant , number of fruits per plant fruit length ,fruit breadth ,yield per plant compared to third transplanting time (T3).The maximum yield per plant (331.22g) was obtained from the first transplanting time (T1) suggesting that early transplanting time improves fruit yield through promoting the morphological features of tomato. The plant hormone SA showed also significant influence on all the parameters .Plant height, number of leaves per plant, number of branches per plant was increased with the increasing the level of SA but the highest number. of flower clusters (3.08), fruit number per plant.(5.58),fruit length (4.512cm), fruit breadth (4.644cm) ,individual fruit weight (55.86g), total yield per plant (295.9g) recorded from the SA2 (0.2 mM SA).The combined effect of transplanting date and SA also had significant influence on different growth and yield parameters and yield. The highest yield of fruit (417.23g) was recorded from the T1SA2 (10 December,2014 and 0.2mM SA).Therefore, the treatment combination T1SA2 increased fruit yield and suggest, that early transplanting (T1) with 0.2 mM SA improves morphological characters along with fruit yield of tomato under SAU environmental condition.