Organic Farming for Producing Tomato (Solanumlycopersicum L.) in clay Soils of Gezira, Sudan

Abstract

Fields experiments were carried out for two consecutive seasons (2014/15 and 2015/16) at Gezira Research Station Farm. The main objective was to evaluate the effects of farm yard manure (0, 5 and 10 ton/ha), repellent plant (coriander) and Thiovit Jet 80% Wettable (0 and 8.8 gram per liter) as an elemental sulfur for controlling the powdery mildew on organic tomato production. The treatments were arranged in split split and split plot design replicated three times in the first and second season, respectively. The results showed that the repellent plant numerically increased the marketable yield of tomato in the first season by 87% and significantly by 46% in the second season. Tomato grown with repellent plant recorded the high marketable yield in the two seasons. The addition of 5 ton/ha of farm yard manure recorded the high marketable yield (3359 kg/ha) in the first season while application of 10 tons FYM gave the high yield (7466 kg/ha) in the second season. However, the addition of sulfur resulted in insignificant effect on all the studied traits of tomato and this may be attributed to its late application which was at fruit setting stage. The repellent plant significantly increased the number of branches per plant in the first season and only numerical increase in the second season, whereas both doses of FYM only recorded a slight increase in the plant height in the second season. The interaction between the three studied factors on all tomato traits was not significant except for the number of branches and the percent of the total soluble solids in the first season. Also a significant interaction was obtained between farm yard manure and sulfur which was reflected in plant height and sun scald where that between repellent plant and farm yard manure was shown in the percent of total soluble solids.