Effect of humic acid and naphthalene acetic acid on vegetative growth and fruit quality of tomato plants Lycopersicon esculentum

Abstract

The study aimed to improve fruit set and plant performance to increase tomato productivity by studying the effect of plant growth regulators on tomato plants (Lycopersicon esculentum). A specific experiment has been carried out to study the effect of plant growth regulators Hemo bles (humic acid, 850g/kg) at applied doses (250, 500 and 700 ppm) and Magictone (naphthalene acetic acid and naphthalene acetamide, 5…12.5 g/kg) at applied doses (250, 500 and 700 ppm) on growth and physiological characteristics of tomato plants (Big Beef F1). The experimental design was a Complete Randomized Blocks Design. Both Hemo bles and Magictone were applied three times (spraying on plants at 30 days after planting (DAP), 60 DAP and 90 DAP). The obtained results showed that, applying Ener-850 humic acid caused the highest significant plant height (264.6 cm), number of leaves/plant (45), stem diameter (1.9 cm) and fruit weight (137 g) during the two seasons. In addition, applying Magictone resulted in the highest significant flower number (48.1), fruit number (35.1) and flower clusters number in the plant (13.6). Additionally, humic acid significantly increased dry weight (75.1 g) of arial parts with improving of tomato fruit quality via enhancing the concentrations of ascorbic acid, level of vitamin C and carotenoid content. The results were analyzed using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by Tukey’s HSD test with α = 0.05 with the help of MINITAB (v. 19.0) program.