International Journal of Horticulture, 2025, Vol.15, No.3, 99-104 http://hortherbpublisher.com/index.php/ijh 99 Research Report Open Access Effect of Integrated Nutrient Management on Growth and Yield of Tomato Namrata Acharya1 , Hari Prasad Ghimire1, Rejina Sapkota1, Subina Acharya1,2, Suwas Dahal 1, Pariwesh Gnyawali 1,3 1 Agriculture and Forestry University, Rampur, Chitwan, 44209, Nepal 2 Department of Soil Science, Agriculture and Forestry University, Rampur, Chitwan, 44209, Nepal 3 Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Agriculture and Forestry University, Rampur, Chitwan, 44209, Nepal Corresponding author: acharyanamrata57@gmail.com International Journal of Horticulture, 2025, Vol.15, No.3 doi: 10.5376/ijh.2025.15.0011 Received: 01 Jan., 2025 Accepted: 30 Mar., 2025 Published: 12 May, 2025 Copyright © 2025 Acharya et al., This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Preferred citation for this article: Acharya N., Ghimire H.P., Sapkota R., Acharya S., Dahal S., and Gnyawali P., 2025, Effect of integrated nutrient management on growth and yield of tomato, International Journal of Horticulture, 15(3): 99-104 (doi: 10.5376/ijh.2025.15.0011) Abstract An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of integrated nutrient management on growth and yield of tomato. The effect of eight different types of nutrient sources were studied using randomized complete block design with three replications. Data on growth and yield parameters were taken from five randomly selected plants in each plot. The plant height was found higher in the treatment of integrated nutrient in all stages. Similarly, number of fruit clusters / plant (8.33) and number of fruits/clusters (9.66) was maximum with the treatment of integrated nutrient. Treatment of integrated nutrient has also produced the longest fruit length (4.64 cm) and highest fruit diameter (56.08 mm) at harvest. The average fruit weight and yield / plot of tomato was maximum in the treatment of integrated nutrient 62.25 g and 75.35 kg respectively at harvest. Also yield / hectare was also maximum in treatment of integrated nutrients with 186.05 mt/ha. Growth parameters, and plant height were better performing in the application of integrated nutrient. Correlation analysis showed that traits like plant height, number of branches, number of flowers, number of fruit clusters/plant, number of fruit / clusters, fruit length, fruit diameter, fruit weight of tomato was to be found positively and significantly correlated with yield of tomato. The result obtained indicated that the growth and yield of tomato is highly influenced by nutrient sources. Keywords Tomato (Solanum lycopersicumL.); Nutrients; Integrated; Management; Yield; Growth 1 Introduction The tomato is an edible berry that is widely cultivated as an annual plant all over the world. It is one of the major income generating vegetable crops of Nepal in terms of production and cultivated area (Prativa and Bhattarai, 2012). There are abundant evidences that concludes inorganic fertilizers can improve yield of crop significantly (Sharma, 2017). Although chemical fertilizers majorly contribute for sufficient crop production for rising world population, its overuse is dragging serious challenges to the present and future generations like air, water and soil pollution, land degradation, soil depletion and increased emissions of greenhouse gases (Kumar et al., 2019). Constant use of chemical fertilizer can alter the pH of soil, increase pests infestation and cause acidification, which results in decreasing organic matter load, humus load, useful organisms, stunting plant growth, and which even become responsible for emission of greenhouse gases (Pahalvi et al., 2021). Organic fertilizer used in rotational cropping systems increased crop output by at least 40%, also improved soil nutrient pools, relative fraction of soil decomposers, and stability and diversity of bacterial and fungal networks (Jiang et al., 2022). The incorporation of organic matter in soil is controlled to avoid excessive release of soluble nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus thereby reducing N leaching loss and P fixation; they can also supply micronutrients subsequently leading to better crop growth and production (Abbott et al., 2015). Integrated Nutrient Management (INM) is an advanced concept of modern agriculture. Application of chemical fertilizers provides a good yield but soil properties are badly affected. Keeping in mind the bad impact of chemical fertilizers uses, the concept of integrated nutrient management is taken under consideration to obtain a higher yield and good quality. INM provides organic and inorganic nutrient components to the plant for
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