Influence Of Staking And Pruning On Growth And Yield Of Tomato In The Guinea Savannah Zone Of Ghana.

Abstract Tomato an important fruit vegetable used in almost every meal in all homes chops bars and restaurants to create appetite and taste. It has the potential of becoming a corner stone in alleviating poverty of smallholder farmers in Ghana especially Northern Ghana but its production results in low yield due small size and rotten tomato fruits at harvest. Higher yields can be realized when famers adopt best agronomic practices to enhance yield to match consumption demand of the Red Gold. This research was therefore carried out in the Northern Region of Ghana the second largest tomato growing region after the Upper East Region to determine the effect of staking and pruning on the growth and yield of tomato. It is equip tomato farmers in the Savannah Ecological zone of Ghana with best agronomic practices to among other things increase marketable yield of tomato. Three cultivars of tomato namely local F1 titao and Pectomech were used. The experiment was a 223 factorial with 12 treatments each replicated 3 times. The factors were pruning staking and variety. These were laid in a randomized complete block design. The study measured seven parameters which included fruit yield plant height and number of branches days to flowering number of flowers and number of fruits dry matter and fruit yield. The results of the experiment showed that the all the parameters were cultivar dependent except fruit yield. Pruning affected plant height negatively and unstaked-unpruned plants were significantly higher than unstaked - pruned and staked - pruned plants. Staking did not show significant differences among treatments. At harvest unstaked-unpruned and staked-unpruned plants indicated higher number of fruits per plant with small fruit size as compared to the other plants. Stake - prune and unstake - prune plants few number of fruit per plant but fruits size bigger than staked-unpruned and unstaked - unpruned. The local cultivar ripped earlier than F1 titao and pectomech cultivars. Marketable fruit yield was obtained in staked - pruned of local and F1 titao cultivars similar to staked - unpruned. The study concluded that the effect of staking and pruning on growth and yield of tomato was cultivar depended. Staking and pruning gave clean and bigger fruits with an increase in total marketable fruit yield by weight. The study therefore recommends that tomato farmers should adopt staking and pruning to obtain higher marketable yields that will fetch them good prices but must be guided in their cultivar selection.