EFFECT OF POULTRY LITTER BASED COMPOSTS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF TOMATO

Abstract

An experiment was conducted in the research field of the Department of Crop Physiology and Ecology, Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science and Technology University, Dinajpur, during September, 2017 to March, 2018 to find out the effect of poultry litter based composts on the growth, yield and yield contributing attributes of tomato. The experiment was laid out in a two factor Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. Two tomato varieties, namely BARI Tomato 4 (V1) and Ratan (V2) with seven fertilizations i.e. C0= Control, C1= 20 t ha-1 compost (produced from poultry litter and ash), C2= 30 t ha-1 compost (produced from poultry litter and ash), C3= 20 t ha-1 compost (produced from poultry litter and saw dust), C4= 30 t ha-1 compost (produced from poultry litter and saw dust), C5= 20 t ha-1 compost (produced from poultry litter with kitchen waste and cow dung) and C6= 30 t ha-1 1 compost (produced from poultry litter with kitchen waste and cow dung). Data were collected on plant height, number of leaf plant-1 , number of branches plant-1 , days to 50% flowering, days to 50% fruit setting, number of fruit plant-1 , diameter of fruit (cm), length of fruit (cm), stem diameter (cm) and yield (t ha-1 ). Among the studied variety, BARI Tomato 4 performed better regarding the compost treatment C5 (20 t ha-1 compost produced from poultry litter with kitchen waste and cow dung) produced higher yield than the other compost treatments. Though the application of compost increases the number and quantity of the studied traits, but the treatment combination V1C5 (BARI Tomato 4 with 20 t ha-1 , compost produced from poultry litter with kitchen waste and cow dung) produced the highest yield (46.27 t ha-1 ).