Development of Sustainable and Economically Viable Greenhouse Production Technology for Tomato in Plains

The production programme was implemented to develop the sustainable, cost effective and economically viable greenhouse technology for tomato in plains. The treatments comprised of eight modules consisting of four different locally available soil media, i.e., sand, coir peat, smoked paddy husk and saw dust in one fourth proportion. The common media was the soil in half proportion and compost in one fourth proportion of total media, two irrigation regimes, plant nutrients status, fertigation with water soluble as well as straight fertilizers, use of mulch and variety SH-7711 (indeterminate hybrid) has been tried with three replications in Randomized Block Design in the Naturally Ventilated Polyhouse at NARP, Ganeshkhind, Pune. The seedlings were transplanted during November 2003 and 2004 to ensure the off season production and their pooled data was presented. The findings revealed that, the Module 7, i.e., soil : compost : sand as substrate, 20 kPa irrigation regime, basal dose of 50 kg/ha NPK with straight fertilizers + fertigation @ 250:250:250 kg/ha NPK with straight fertilizers, black polythene mulch and variety SH-7711 recorded significantly maximum number of clusters per plant (17.89), number of fruits per cluster (6.44), number of fruits per plant (88.44) and the fruit yield per plant (6.70 kg) and therefore found to be best package for higher production of tomato in naturally ventilated green house.