Physiology, Growth, Yield And Fruit Quality Of Selected Greenhouse Tomatoes (Solanum Lycopersicum) Varieties As Affected By Different Growing Media And Potting Bag Sizes.

ABSTRACT Tomato is one of the most important vegetable crops cultivated in Ghana and constitutes part of the daily diet of most of the populace. Ghana produces 366,772t/ha annually, yet imports 25,000t/ha of tomato paste and $9.9million worth of fresh tomatoes from Burkina Faso and Europe annually to fill the supply gap which puts a lot of pressure on the country’s GDP. To help minimize importation and bridge the demand gap, several interventions have been proposed including greenhouse production. Thus an investigation into the effects of growing bag sizes and substrates on growth, yield and fruit quality of two tomato varieties was conducted under greenhouse conditions. The treatments comprised of three growing bag sizes (5 Litre, 10 Litre and 15 Litre ), three substrates (palm fibre, cocopeat and carbonated rice husk) and two tomato cultivars (Rodeo and Limbobo) laid out in a factorial experiment using the Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications. Vegetative, reproductive, yield and yield components, as well as fruit quality parameters were measured. Results obtained indicated that, carbonated rice husk provided high plant growth indices followed by palm fibre and cocopeat. For the growing bag sizes, the 15Litre bag supported extensive growth in plant biomass and high growth indices followed by 10Litre and 5Litre bags. Palm fibre substrate provided the highest dry matter weights, yield and yield component, fruit quality and net returns whiles cocopeat was the second best in yield and yield components, and fruit quality. However, carbonated rice husk gave the second best overall net returns. 10 Litre growing bag gave the highest yield and yield component, as well as fruit quality. Rodeo tomato plants were superior to Limbobo plants. Overall, Rodeo plants in 10 Litre of palm fibre gave the highest yield and fruit quality and is recommended to farmers to use under greenhouse production systems to obtain higher yields, quality fruit and higher net returns.