Effect of Organic and Inorganic Mulching on Plant Development and Yield of Tomato

A field experiment was conducted at Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Pithoragarh (Uttarakhand) during the summer session of 2022 to study the effect of organic and inorganic mulches on plant development and yield of Tomato Cv. Naveen 2000. The most common types of inorganic mulch are rocks or gravel, plastic, fabric and rubber sheets. The main difficulty with such type of inorganic mulching materials is that they do not decompose for a long period whereas the most common types of organic mulch are compost, tree bark, wood chips, leaves, grass, pine needles, straw, sawdust, hulls etc. easily decompose and provide nutrients to plants. The experiment was laid out as Randomized Block Design (RBD) with four replications. The experiment included seven treatments viz., T1 - Black polyethylene mulch (30 1 Microns), T2 - Silver polyethylene mulch (25 Microns), T3 - Pasture mulch (10 t/ha), T4 - Paddy straw mulch (10 t/ha), T5 - Wild grass leaves mulch (10 t/ha), T6 - Grass leaves trash (which are used for the cow/buffalo to sleep at night): 10 t/ha and T7 - Control (Without mulch). The result showed that the treatment T1 - Black polyethylene mulch (30 microns) was found to be best among the various mulch treatments and recorded higher values for plant height, days taken to first flowering, number of branches/plant, number of fruits/ plant, days taken to first harvesting and the treatment T5 - Wild grass leaves mulch (10 t/ha) was found to be recorded higher values for fruit weight (g), fruit yield/ plant (kg), fruit yield/ plot (kg) and fruit yield/ hectare (t).