YIELD AND QUALITY OF TOMATO AS AFFECTED BY DIFFERENT METHODS OF IRRIGATION WITH MUNICIPAL WASTEWATER

Abstract

Proper irrigation methods and management can help farmers to harvest the benefits of wastewater irrigation while minimizing the risk of its use for crop production. The study was carried out at the outskirt of Rajshahi city of Bangladesh during November 2017 – March 2018 to investigate the effect of municipal wastewater (hereafter called wastewater) irrigation on the yield and quality of tomato under different irrigation methods. Five irrigation methods- viz., M1: traditional furrow irrigation (TFI), M2: alternate furrow irrigation (AFI), M3: bed and furrow irrigation (BFI) with wastewater at 10 days intervals, M4: drip irrigation at 3 days interval and M5: flood irrigation with wastewater were tested in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. The yield contributing characters and yield of tomato under four different improved irrigation methods were compared with the flood irrigation method. Almost all yield contributing parameters like number and weight of fruit per plant were varied significantly when compared with flood irrigation system. Among the irrigation methods, drip irrigation gave the highest fruit yield of tomato (80.86 t/ha) and the yield under AFI (73.67 t/ha), BFI (72.58 t/ha) and TFI (70.86 t/ha) were identical and the lowest yield (50.42 t/ha) was obtained from flood irrigation. Like yield, the highest number and weight of fruit per plant were also obtained from drip irrigation. The effects of irrigation systems on water use and water productivity were also evaluated. Total water use ranged from 234 to 385 mm with minimum in drip irrigation and maximum in flood irrigation. Among the different furrow irrigation systems, water use was found higher in TFI system than that of AFI and BFI systems. As far as biological quality is concerned, drip irrigation found the best with the lowest bacterial contamination compared to other irrigation techniques. BFI was also found good where contamination considerably reduced. So, these irrigation techniques need to be practiced by the wastewater farmers to improve the product quality by reducing the contamination and to protect consumer health.