The effects of leaf pruning systems on biomass growth and yield of tomato (lycopersicon esculentum) in a greenhouse environment

Author

Mashingaidze, Chigonera.

Title

The effects of leaf pruning systems on biomass growth and yield of tomato (lycopersicon esculentum) in a greenhouse environment

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of different leaf pruning systems on tomato plant growth and yield of tomatoes grown under greenhouse conditions at Greystone farm during the December to May 2023 growing season. The research was conducted with the objective of determining the effect of leaf pruning system on biomass growth and yield of tomato in a greenhouse environment. The experiment was performed with a randomized complete block design with three replicates and five treatments. No pruning (T1) which was treated as the control for the experiment, pruning one leaf below each cluster on a plant (T2), pruning one leaf above each cluster on a plant (T3), pruning one leaf above and one leaf below each cluster (T4) and pruning two leaves between two clusters and living one at the middle (T5). The plants whose leaves were pruned grew vegetatively quickly and produced better yields than the unpruned plants. It was also observed that the vegetative and reproductive growth of the plants was prolonged by the pruning. Although the plants with one leaf pruned above and one leaf below each cluster yielded a higher yield than all the other treatments, subsequent unpruned plant, was the least performer. Statistically significant differences were observed between growth and total yield. The difference in plant height, plant girth, leaf girth, leaf length, individual fruit weight and diameter between treatments also proved to be statistically significant. Since pruning of one leaf above and one leaf below each cluster proved to have best results across all parameters farmers can adopt it and implement in the greenhouse environment.

Date

2023

Publisher

BUSE

Keywords

Leaf pruning systems

Tomato production

Leaf pruning

Shoots pruning

Supervisor

Chikasha, T.E

Professor Chikuvire, T. J