Effect of Growth Regulation through Spacing and Pruning on Yield and Quality of Tomato Hybrids (Lychopersicon esculentum Mill.) Grown under Control Conditions

An experiment was conducted at Indian Institute of Horticultural Sciences, Bangalore to study the effect of growth regulation through spacing and pruning on yield and quality of tomato hybrids (Lychopersicon esculentum Mill.) grown under control conditions. The results of present investigation revealed that tomato variety Sun 7611 (V₂) recorded the higher (7.42, 7.90, 4.63 and 1.85) number of flowers per cluster at all the stages of crop growth and differed significantly from Arka Abhijith (V₁). Where in pruning methods single stem (P₁) gave higher (6.74 and 7.09) number of flowers per cluster at 30 and 60 days after transplanting, which were significantly different from P₂ (double stem). Tomato grown on single-stem resulted in higher individual fruit weight (77.04 g) than double stemmed plants. Maximum yield of 2.23 kg/plant and 129.4 tonnes per hectare was recorded in plants having two stemmed plant, and the yield of 1.96 kg per plant and 114.38 tons per hectare was obtained from single-stemmed plants. Plants wider spacing gave the highest fruit weight (79.15 g) followed by medium spacing plants (73.92 g) and the least was recorded in closely spacing plants (69.07 g). Fruit yield per plant was significantly reduced under closer plant spacing (1.8 kg) and increased as spacing were increased.