GROWTH AND YIELD PERFORMANCE OF DIFFERENT TOMATO (Solanum lycopersicum L.) VARIETIES UNDER SALINITY

Abstract

Salinity is a severe limiting factor for vegetable production. Therefore, a pot experiment was conducted at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, from November 2019 to April 2020 to evaluate the performance of different tomato varieties e.g. BARI Tomato 2 (V1), BARI Tomato 15 (V2), and BARI Tomato 16 (V3) under different level of salinity e.g. 0 mM (S0), 75 mM NaCl (S1) and 150 mM NaCl (S2) in completely randomized design with three replications. The experiment revealed significant negative influence of salinity which decreased plant height, leaf number, branch number, chlorophyll content, growth rate, fresh and dry weight, fruit number etc. resulting yield loss. Damaged by S2 salinity is more severe than the S1. In normal condition V2 produced highest yield following V3 and V1. But severe salinity stress reduced yield by 32.66%, 43.9% and 42.8% in V1, V2 and V3 respectively. So, considering yield performance V1 variety is more tolerant to salinity than the other tested variety.