Effect of Different Pruning Systems on Yield and Quality of Tomato Grown Under Greenhouse

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to assess the effect of different pruning systems on the yield and quality of tomatoes grown under greenhouse at the National Centre for Organic Agriculture, Yusipang for the growing period of March to November 2019. The experiment was conducted with a randomized complete block design with a single factor at three different levels viz. single leader system (T1), double leader system (T2), and unpruned plants (T3) which were treated as the control for the experiment. All the leaves and axillary shoots below the first flower cluster were pruned off. For treatment T1, only the main stem was encouraged to grow. As for the treatment T2, the sucker growing just below the cluster was also encouraged to grow along with the main stem. This sucker served as the second leader. No pruning of leaves or axillary shoots was carried out in the control plot (T3) at all times. The plants that were pruned started fruiting and maturing earlier than that of unpruned plants. It was also observed that the vegetative and reproductive growth of plants was lengthened by pruning. Although the plants pruned into a single leader system yielded higher than the double leader and the unpruned plants, no statistically significant differences were observed amongst the means of the total yield. The difference in the individual fruit weight, length and diameter amongst the treatments were also found to be statistically not significant. The findings from this research suggest that although pruning gives a higher yield than control there is no significant difference in the yield of tomatoes grown in greenhouse till the 6th harvest. Pruning the plants to a single leader system proved to improve the fruit quality substantially for tomatoes grown in the greenhouse.