The Influences of Water Availability and Vesiculararbuscular Mycorrhizal (VAM) Fungi on Growth and Physiological Processes of Tomato (Lycopersicon Esculentum Mill.) in Soilless Culture

A study was conducted to determine the influence of water availability and vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhizal (V AM) inoculation on growth and physiological changes of tomato. Two-week old tomato seedlings were transferred to cultivation slab (120 cm x 30 cm) containing 6 kg of coconut coir dust mixture (CD-Mix) media and allowed to grow for two weeks before uniform plants were chosen for treatment. The experiment was a single factor experiment arranged in a Complete Randomized Design (CRD) with different levels of VAM inoculated at 0, 10, 20, 30 and 40 g per plant with four replications. Data was collected at one week after treatment and subsequently at by-weekly interval until the 7th week. Plants inoculated with the highest level of inoculum (40 g) resulted in significant higher vegetative growth (as measured by shoot and stem dry weight) and physiological processes (relative water content and stomatal conductance). There was a significant linear relationship between the number of fruits (y=234.094 + 1.215x) and the total soluble solids (y=5.603 + 0.038x) with the rate of inoculum used. V AM at 40 g per plant was further evaluated using a split plot arrangement in Randomized Completely Block Design (RCBD), with water availability (WA) as main-plot (100%, 75%, 500/0 and 25% of moisture content: based on substrate water holding capacity) and V AM inoculation (MI) as sub-plot. Data was collected at weekly interval (4 weeks) after treatment.

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