Study of growth parameters and germination of tomato seedlings in soil-less media under protected environment

Abstract

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) from family Solanaceae is a popularly cultivated vegetable in the world, and is famous for its nutritive and medicinal values. There are some shortcomings in the traditional nursery production techniques such as poor germination, poor quality seedlings and sometimes farmers face problems to raise tomato seedlings in due time in adverse environmental conditions. This nursery production technique has the potential to grow healthy seedlings in short time and even during adverse climatic conditions.Hence, proposed study was undertakenat the Vegetable Research Farm, Department of Vegetable Science and Floriculture, CSK Himachal Pradesh Krishi Vishvavidyalaya, Palampur under growth chamberduring spring-summer seasonto evaluate germination percent and growth parameters of tomato in soilless media using pro-trays and to isolate the prospective hybrid (s) for protected cultivation too. The experimental material comprised of twelve diverse hybrids of tomato along with one bacterial wilt resistant check. Experiment was laid out in Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with five replications. The analysis of variance showed satisfactory genetic variation among the hybrids for all the traits studied, which showed the presence of adequate variability. Based on the mean performance of all the tested hybrids, the hybrid combination CLN2126 × CLN1314G found significantly thick stem diameter than the check Palam Tomato Hybrid-1 and was found statistically at par with the check for rest of the traits viz., days to 50% germination, total germination percent, number of true leaves, seedling height, root length and total number of healthy seedlings. From the present investigation it was cleared that the hybrid combination CLN2126 × CLN1314G was promising for high germination and other growth parameters in soil-less media.