Annals of Horticulture
Year : 2009, Volume : 2, Issue : 1
First page : ( 20) Last page : ( 25)
Print ISSN : 0974-8784.

Irrigation Scheduling of Tomato Under Scarcity Conditions

Kashyap P.S.¹, Sharma Vinod Kumar²

¹Department of Vegetable Science Email: pskashyap@yahoo.com.

²Department of Agricultural Engineering, G.B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar, Hill Campus, Ranichauri-249 199.

Abstract

The study was carried out at the College of Forestry & Hill Agriculture, Hill Campus, Ranichauri, Uttarakhand, India. Field experiments were conducted on tomato crop (Lycopersicum esculentum) during 2005–06 and 2006–07. The crop was transplanted in May and was harvested in September spanning 125 and 120 days during 2005–06 and 2006–07, respectively. Four irrigation treatments were maintained based on the maximum allowable depletion (MAD) of available soil water. The treatments were 15% (T1), 30% (T₂), 45% (T3) and 60% (T4) of maximum allowable depletion of available soil water. No water stress was maintained till 30 days from the transplanting in order to allow the plants attain a healthy growth. Soil moisture content was measured using gravimetric method peroidically in 0–15, 15–30, 30–45 and 45–60 cm soil profiles. It was found that for scheduling of irrigation in tomato crop. the 0–30 cm soil profile should be considered as most of the water was found to bl! extracted from this layer by the plant. Field experiments revealed that irrigation schedule with 45% maximum allowable depletion of available soil water gave the maximum water use efficiency for tomato crop.

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Key words

Tomato, irrigation scheduling, stress condition, water use efficiency.

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