Yield and Quality of Tomato from Organic Fertilization Systems In the Philippines

Conde, MAA and De Asis, GS

ABSTRACT

The effects of vermicompost and different organic concoctions on the yield and quality of tomatoes, determining the quality of tomato fruits in terms of ascorbic acid and beta-carotene contents as influenced by different organic fertilization systems was evaluated at Escuala, Casiguran, Sorsogon, Philippines (July- November 2017). The Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) was used with 15 treatments replicated thrice. Treatment was as follows: T1 – Farmer’s practice (control); and T2 to T15 vermicompost (VC) as basal fertilizer. Results for the yield include the number of fruits, the weight of fruits/ plant, number of marketable fruits/plant, the weight of marketable fruits/plant, and number of non-marketable fruits/plant. Analysis of ascorbic acid and beta-carotene determined the quality of fruits. For each treatment, 100g samples of marketable tomato fruits at the 1st harvest were brought to the College of Agriculture, Food Science Cluster, University of the Philippines for ascorbic acid and beta-carotene content analyses. T1-Farmer’s practice (Synthetic fertilizer) was significantly the same as T2-Vermicompost (Organic basal fertilizer) on different parameters of fruit yield. Among the different treatments, T14 (VC+IMO+FAA+CalPhos) yielded the highest number and weight of fruits per plant, number and weight of marketable fruits per plant, and fruits tons/hectare. T14 was similar with T13 (VC+IMO+FAA+FFJ) and T15 (VC+IMO+FFJ+CalPhos) significantly similar with T1 on the numbers of fruits per plant; and significantly different in almost all the other factors in the yield of tomato fruits. Organic fertilizer at T15 had the highest beta-carotene content in tomato fruits (47.80 mg/100g), followed by T2 (24.19mg/100g), and T14 (19.56 mg/100g).

Keywords - Ascorbic acid, beta-carotene, fruit yield, organic fertilization, tomato

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