YIELD MAXIMIZATION OF TOMATO (Solanum lycopersicum L.) BY IMPROVING SEEDLING CHARACTERS USING CHITOSAN RAW MATERIAL POWDER UNDER SILTY CLAY LOAM SOIL

Abstract

Chitosan is a natural biopolymer which stimulates seedlings growth, supply plant nutrients and modifies growth, yield and yield attributes of plants as well as induces the immune system of plants. A field experiment was conducted at the net-house of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka-1207, during the period from November, 2019 to April, 2020 to study the yield maximization of tomato by improving seedling characters using chitosan raw material powder under silty clay loam soil. The experiment was designed with four treatments using three different levels of chitosan raw material powder in the seedbed soil. The used treatments were: T 1 (0%), T 2 (0.1%), T 3 (0.5%), T 4 (1%). The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with five replications. Result revealed that application of chitosan raw material powder improving seedling characters such as seedling height, seedling fresh weight, seedling oven dry weight and seedling strength. Result also revealed that chitosan raw material powder increased plant morphological character e.g. plant height, reproductive and yield attributes such as number of flower bud/plant, fruits/plant and fruit yield over control. With increasing the doses of chitosan raw material powder, most of the morphological, reproductive and yield attributes were increased, whereas control plants showed the lowest value of the above parameters. Most of the morphological, growth and reproductive attributes were recorded maximum in the T 3 treatment. The experimental results revealed that treatment T 3 having 0.5% chitosan raw material powder perform well and produced highest seedling height (15.1 cm), maximum fresh weight/70 seedlings (65.28 g) and oven dry weight/70 seedlings (5.40 g), seedling strength (5.09 mg/cm), highest plant height at 65 DAT (98.98 cm), number of flower bud/plant at 65 DAT (252), minimum days for first flowering (34.80), minimum days for 100 % flowering (39.80), no. of fruits/plant (44.93), average single fruit weight/tomato (51.52 g), fruit yield (74.21 t/ha) and fruit yield over control (16.06%).The experimental results also showed that soil organic carbon content, soil organic matter and % total nitrogen was increased significantly with the application of chitosan raw material powder in seedbed soil. The chitosan raw material powder also increased pH of the seedbed soil. Taken together, the experiment results indicate that application of chitosan raw material powder in seedbed soil have significant effect on the improvement of seedling characters that maximize yield of BARI tomato-15.