Performance of tomato seedlings on different growing media
Authors: Swati Saha¹ and B.K. Srivastava^2
1 Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi -110012
² G.B.P.U.A. &T., Pantnagar

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicon L. syn. Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) is most popular fruit vegetable of the family Solanaceae, grown all over the world. Tomato is universally treated as a protective food and is also a very good source of income to small and marginal farmers. It is a rich source of minerals, vitamins and organic acid. For getting optimum yield it is important to take care of every production practice starting from nursery stage to harvesting. Whereas reasonably good work has been done on varietal improvement, nutrition, water requirement etc., in India not much scientific efforts have been made to standardize the growing medium for seedling raising and suitable age of seedlings for transplanting tomato in different regions and locations.

Treatments comprising of three growing media (M1 â€" Vermiculite + Perlite + Compost, 1:1:3; M2 â€" Sand + Soil + FYM, 1:1:2; M3 â€" Rice bran + Vermicompost, 1:2). The observations were recorded on growth characters, maturity parameters, yield and yield attributes and quality characters. The results portrayed that growing media had a pronounced effect on the growth, production and quality of tomato. The overall, evaluation indicated that the growing media containing Vermiculite + Perlite + Compost (1:1:3) followed by Sand + Soil + FYM (1:1:2) proved the best. The rice bran + vermicompost media was not found good due to compacting nature of rice bran.

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