Evaluation of the Effects of Irrigation and Inorganic Fertilizers Management on Yield and Water Productivity of Tomato

Efficient use of water and fertilizers by crops calls for revised or new agricultural crop management practices to sustain agricultural production. Improved irrigation and fertilizer management will be needed to reduce nutrient leaching from horticultural crops. Over-irrigation increases the leaching of nitrogen (nitrogen is very soluble in water) and hence the amount of applied nitrogen required for maximum yield. This experiment was conducted at Adami Tulu Agricultural Research Center with the objective of evaluating the effects of different irrigation levels and N-fertilizer rates on yield and yield components of tomato. The treatments of the experiment had factorial combinations of four irrigation levels of watering and five N-fertilizer amounts. The results revealed that different fertilizer rate produced higher tomato with the amount of water applied. The growth, yield and yield contributing characters like plant height, fruit length, fruit diameter, and fruit weight per plant were influenced significantly by different levels of irrigation and fertilizer rate. Whereas, the interaction between Irrigation levels and nitrogen rate were all also significant for all characters of yield components. Maximum grain yield of 115.64 qt hasup-1/sup was recorded in plots treated with nitrogen dose of 110 kg hasup-1/sup when compared to other treatments. Similarly, maximum tomato yield of 117.94 qt hasup-1/sup was recorded in 100% ETc of applied water while minimum yield of 89.4 and 108.70 qt hasup-1/sup was harvested from plots sown with 125% ETc water applied and application of 90 kg N hasup-1/sup respectively. It can be concluded from these results that 100% ETc of applied water and fertilizer N at the rate of 110 kg hasup-1/sup produced economical crop of tomato under climatic conditions of the study area.