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Pruning is a management practice that helps to increase fruit yield and quality of fruit, better aeration, better exposure of foliage to sunlight and photosynthetic. Pruning is not a common practice among tomato growers in Northern Guinea Savanna of Nigeria and most of the farmers have no idea about it. Field trials were conducted concurrently during the dry season of 2020 on the Research Farms of the Institute for Agricultural Research, Samaru (11o 11ꞌN, 07o 38ꞌE 686 m above sea level) and Farmers field in Kujama, (9o 34ꞌN, 8 o 18ꞌE 740m above sea level) in the Northern Guinea Savanna Ecological Zones of Nigeria; to determine the effect of pruning on the growth and yield of indeterminate and determinate hybrid tomato varieties. The experiment consisted of 12 treatments comprising of three pruning techniques (no-pruning, pruning on one stem and two stems) and four varieties of tomato (1 indeterminate hybrid tomato; Larisa F1, 2 determinate hybrid Delta F1, and Platinum F1), and one determinate open pollinated variety (UC82B). The four varieties of tomato with three pruning techniques were factorially combined and laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replicates. The result at both locations showed varietal significant differences on growth parameters such as higher plant height, shoot dry weight, leaf area index, crop growth rate, relative crop growth rate, and yield attribute such as fruit diameter, fruits weight per plant, where Larisa F1 performed better than other varieties. Pruning tomato plant to two- stem and one-stem significantly increased growth parameters where two-stem pruned plants performed best. Variety × pruning interaction on total fresh fruit yield indicated that the combination of Larisa F1 with two-stem was found suitable for maximum fruit yield though at par with Larisa F1 one-stem and unpruned.
Yaro et al. (Mon,) studied this question.