Evaluation of different nutrient solution in aeroponics for performance of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.)

Abstract

Tomato is an important vegetable crop which will be on demand throughout the year but meeting the demand under the diverse and un-predictable climatic factors, recurrent disease and pest is a challenging task in traditional method of production. Aeroponics is one of the advanced techniques to cultivate plants without soil with minimal water and nutrient consumption where nutrient solution will be sprayed to the root zone with regular time interval. This is the technology which could bring the vertical growth in agriculture. It is an eco-friendly approach widely used for commercial cultivation of vegetables to obtain the supreme quality and yield. Among factors affecting hydroponic and aeroponics production systems, the nutrient solution is considered to be one of the most important determining factors of crop yield and quality. Therefore, standardization of nutrient solution owes an import task for potential quality seed harvest in soil-less agriculture. Different nutrient solutions viz., Chikkaballapur, CPRI, Hoagland’s, Ethiopia, USDA and Komosa were studied to understand the effect of the different nutrient combination on tomato hybrid seed production by recording plant growth parameters at every 5 days interval from the date of transplanting to 25 days after transplanting. Based on the result it was found that Hoagland’s solution (88.07 cm) performed better at 25 DAT followed by Komosa (82.10 cm) and lower was recorded in Chikkaballapur (67.60 cm).