Abstract:
The present project was to study the effect of drip irrigation management
under soil and different soilless media such as coir pith and saw dust for the crop
tomato growing inside a naturally ventilated greenhouse. The experiment was laid out
in randomized block design and the entire area was divided into 27 plots having nine
treatments with three replications for each treatment. The average water requirement
for the crop for the entire crop period is taken as 2 litre/day/plant. Crops were
supplied with drip irrigation at the rate of 50%, 75% and 100% of the total crop water
requirement to all the three media.
The crop inside the naturally ventilated greenhouse in the soil with drip
irrigation of 1.0 l/day/plant (50 % irrigation level) performed well during the
experiment with a water use efficiency of 117.96 kg/ha mm and average yield of
14.81 t/ha. The crops in the soil media give higher yield than the soilless media. In
case of coir pith, the treatment with 2.0 l/day/plant (100 % irrigation level) recorded
the highest yield (7.93 t/ha) where as in sawdust the highest yield (2.50 t/ha) is
obtained for the treatment having 1.0 l/day/ plant irrigation.
The highest water use efficiency values were obtained for treatments with drip
irrigation of 1.0 l/day/ plant for all the growing media. So 50% irrigation level in soil
is found to be best suited for tomato cultivation of LE-66 Variety through drip
irrigation.
