Vol. 12, Issue 9 (2023)

Author(s):
Gunjan Mahajan, Puja Rattan and Ashutosh Sharma

Abstract:
Present investigations were conducted at the experimental farm of Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, DAV University, Jalandhar during summer season of 2021. The main objective of the study was to evaluate the effect of microbial inoculants on growth, yield and quality attributes of tomato. The experiment was laid out in Factorial Randomized Block Design with three replication and 8 treatment combinations, comprising of control and 3 microbial inoculants viz., T₁ (Trichoderma), T₂ (Pseudomonas) and T₃ (Rhizobium) and two varieties viz., V₁ (Punjab Ratta) and V₂ (Punjab Gourav). Significant influence of all the treatments was observed on all the characters during Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The characters studied were days to first flowering, days to 50% flowering, plant height, number of primary branches, number of secondary branches, stem diameter, days to fruit set, number of fruits per cluster, number of fruits per plant, fruit length, fruit diameter, average fruit weight (g), fruit yield per plot (Kg), total soluble solids (⁰Brix), ascorbic acid(mg/100ml) and titratable acidity (%).Minimum number of days to first flowering and days to 50% flowering and maximum TSS was observed with the application of T₂ (Pseudomonas). Whereas T₃ (Rhizobium) resulted in maximum plant height, number of primary branches per plant, number of secondary branches per plant, number of fruits per cluster, number of fruits per plant, fruit length, fruit diameter, average fruit weight, yield per plot and quality parameters viz., ascorbic acid and titratable acidity and minimum days to fruiting. T₁ (Trichoderma) resulted in maximum stem diameter. Among the cultivars, V₁ (Punjab Ratta) was proved best when treated with microbial inoculants viz., Trichoderma, Pseudomonas and Rhizobium. In the interactions the treatment T₃ x V₁ (Rhizobium x Punjab Ratta) gave best results for plant height, number of primary branches per plant, number of secondary branches per plant, number of fruits per plant, fruit length, fruit diameter, average fruit weight, yield per plot, TSS, ascorbic acid and titratable acidity. T₂ x V₁ (Pseudomonas x Punjab Ratta) resulted in minimum days to first flowering whereas, T₂ x V₂ (Pseudomonas x Punjab Gourav) took minimum days to 50% flowering. T₃ x V₁ (Rhizobium x Punjab Ratta) resulted in maximum stem diameter while, maximum fruits per cluster were recorded in T₁ x V₂ (Trichoderma x Punjab Gourav).